THE 
AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 


SOLON].  BUC1C 


II  B  R.AFLY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 
OF    ILLINOIS 


363 


193,0 


U.  KIST.  -' .-,• 


THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  EDITION 

VOLUME  45 

THE   CHRONICLES 

OF  AMERICA  SERIES 

ALLEN  JOHNSON 

EDITOR 

GERHARD  R.  LOMER 

CHARLES  W.  JEFFERYS 

ASSISTANT  EDITORS 


THE 
AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

A  CHRONICLE  OF 

THE  FARMER  IN  POLITICS 

BY  SOLON  J.  BUCK 


NEW  HAVEN:  YALE   UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

TORONTO:    GLASGOW,   BROOK  &  CO. 

LONDON:    HUMPHREY    MILFORD 

OXFORD    UNIVERSITY    PRESS 

1920 


Copyright,  1920,  by  Yale  University  Press 


34,3 

8 

n 


PREFACE 

RAPID  growth  accompanied  by  a  somewhat  painful 
readjustment  has  been  one  of  the  leading  charac- 
teristics of  the  history  of  the  United  States  during 
the  last  half  century.  In  the  West  the  change  has 
been  so  swift  and  spectacular  as  to  approach  a  com- 

\^  plete  metamorphosis.     With  the  passing  of  the 

frontier  has  gone  something  of  the  old  freedom  and 

.the  old  opportunity;  and  the  inevitable  change  has 

^brought  forth  inevitable  protest,  particularly  from 

<?the  agricultural  class.  Simple  farming  communi- 
have  wakened  to  find  themselves  complex  in- 


regions  in  which  the  farmers  have  fre- 

<f> 

-quently  lost  their  former  preferred  position.     The 

^result  has  been  a  series  of  radical  agitations  on 

the  part  of  farmers  determined  to  better  then*  lot. 

:2  These  movements  have  manifested  different  de- 

^J 

1  grees  of  coherence  and  intelligence,  but  all  have  had 

;  something  of  the  same  purpose  and  spirit,  and  all 

>  may  justly  be  considered  as  stages  of  the  still 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

unfinished  agrarian  crusade.  This  book  is  an  at- 
tempt to  sketch  the  course  and  to  reproduce  the 
spirit  of  that  crusade  from  its  inception  with  the 
Granger  movement,  through  the  Greenback  and 
Populist  phases,  to  a  climax  in  the  battle  for  free 
silver. 

In  the  preparation  of  the  chapters  dealing  with 
Populism  I  received  invaluable  assistance  from  my 
colleague,  Professor  Lester  B.  Shippee  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Minnesota;  and  I  am  indebted  to  my 
wife  for  aid  at  every  stage  of  the  work,  especially 
in  the  revision  of  the  manuscript. 

SOLON  J.  BUCK. 

MINNESOTA.  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY, 
ST.  PAUL. 


CONTENTS 

I.    THE  INCEPTION  OF  THE  GRANGE  Page      1 

II.    THE  RISING  SPIRIT  OF  UNREST  "  H 

III.  THE    GRANGER    MOVEMENT    AT    FLOOD 

TIDE  "  25 

IV.  CURBING  THE  RAILROADS  "  43 

V.  THE  COLLAPSE  OF  THE  GRANGER  MOVE- 

MENT  "  60 

VI.    THE  GREENBACK  INTERLUDE  "  77 

VII.    THE  PLIGHT  OF  THE  FARMER  "  99 

VIII.    THE  FARMERS'  ALLIANCE  "  111 

IX.    THE  PEOPLE'S  PARTY  LAUNCHED  "  125 

X.    THE  POPULIST  BOMBSHELL  OF  1892  "  142 

XI.    THE  SILVER  ISSUE  «  154 

XII.    THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  STANDARDS  "  172 

XIII.    THE  LEAVEN  OF  RADICALISM  "  194 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE  "  203 

INDEX  "  207 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

OLIVER  H.  KELLEY 

From  an  engraving.  Frontispiece 

IGNATIUS  DONNELLY 

Drawing  from  a  photograph.  Facing  page     £0 

JAMES  B.  WEAVER 

Photograph.  "        "        94 

HENRY  GEORGE 

Photograph  by  Gutekunst,  Philadelphia.  "        "      126 

WILLIAM  JENNINGS  BRYAN 

Photograph  by  Pach  Bros.,  New  York,  1896.  "        "      178 


THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 


CHAPTER  I 

THE    INCEPTION    OF    THE    GRANGE 

WHEN  President  Johnson  authorized  the  Commis- 
sioner of  Agriculture,  in  1866,  to  send  a  clerk  in  his 
bureau  on  a  trip  through  the  Southern  States  to 
procure  "statistical  and  other  information  from 
those  States, "  he  could  scarcely  have  foreseen  that 
this  trip  would  lead  to  a  movement  among  the 
farmers,  which,  in  varying  forms,  would  affect  the 
political  and  economic  life  of  the  nation  for  half  a 
century.  The  clerk  selected  for  this  mission,  one 
Oliver  Hudson  Kelley,  was  something  more  than  a 
mere  collector  of  data  and  compiler  of  statistics :  he 
was  a  keen  observer  and  a  thinker.  Kelley  was 
born  in  Boston  of  a  good  Yankee  family  that  could 
boast  kinship  with  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  and 
Judge  Samuel  Sewall.  At  the  age  of  twenty-three 


2  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

he  journeyed  to  Iowa,  where  he  married.  Then 
with  his  wife  he  went  on  to  Minnesota,  settled  in 
Elk  River  Township,  and  acquired  some  first-hand 
familiarity  with  agriculture.  At  the  time  of  Kel- 
ley's  service  in  the  agricultural  bureau  he  was  forty 
years  old,  a  man  of  dignified  presence,  with  a  full 
beard  already  turning  white,  the  high  broad  fore- 
head of  a  philosopher,  and  the  eager  eyes  of  an  en- 
thusiast. "An  engine  with  too  much  steam  on  all 
the  time"  —  so  one  of  his  friends  characterized 
him;  and  the  abnormal  energy  which  he  displayed 
on  the  trip  through  the  South  justifies  the  figure. 
Kelley  had  had  enough  practical  experience  in 
agriculture  to  be  sympathetically  aware  of  the 
difficulties  of  farm  life  in  the  period  immediately 
following  the  Civil  War.  Looking  at  the  Southern 
farmers  not  as  a  hostile  Northerner  would  but  as  a 
fellow  agriculturist,  he  was  struck  with  the  distress- 
ing conditions  which  prevailed.  It  was  not  merely 
the  farmers'  economic  difficulties  which  he  noticed, 
for  such  difficulties  were  to  be  expected  in  the  South 
hi  the  adjustment  after  the  great  conflict;  it  was 
rather  their  blind  disposition  to  do  as  their  grand- 
fathers had  done,  their  antiquated  methods  of  agri- 
culture, and,  most  of  all,  their  apathy.  Pondering 
on  this  attitude,  Kelley  decided  that  it  was  fostered 


THE  INCEPTION  OF  THE  GRANGE         3 

if  not  caused  by  the  lack  of  social  opportunities 
which  made  the  existence  of  the  farmer  such  a 
drear  monotony  that  he  became  practically  incapa- 
ble of  changing  his  outlook  on  life  or  his  attitude 
toward  his  work. 

Being  essentially  a  man  of  action,  Kelley  did  not 
stop  with  the  mere  observation  of  these  evils  but 
cast  about  to  find  a  remedy.  In  doing  so,  he  came 
to  the  conclusion  that  a  national  secret  order  of 
farmers  resembling  the  Masonic  order,  of  which  he 
was  a  member,  might  serve  to  bind  the  farmers  to- 
gether for  purposes  of  social  and  intellectual  ad- 
vancement. After  he  returned  from  the  South, 
Kelley  discussed  the  plan  in  Boston  with  his  niece, 
Miss  Carrie  Hall,  who  argued  quite  sensibly  that 
women  should  be  admitted  to  full  membership  in 
the  order,  if  it  was  to  accomplish  the  desired  ends. 
Kelley  accepted  her  suggestion  and  went  West  to 
spend  the  summer  in  farming  and  dreaming  of  his 
project.  The  next  year  found  him  again  in  Wash- 
ington, but  this  time  as  a  clerk  in  the  Post  Office 
Department. 

During  the  summer  and  fall  of  1867  Kelley  in- 
terested some  of  his  associates  in  his  scheme.  As 
a  result  seven  men  —  "one  fruit  grower  and  six 
government  clerks,  equally  distributed  among  the 


4  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

Post  Office,  Treasury,  and  Agricultural  Depart- 
ments "  —  are  usually  recognized  as  the  founders  of 
the  Patrons  of  Husbandry,  or,  as  the  order  is  more 
commonly  called,  the  Grange.  These  men,  all  of 
whom  but  one  had  been  born  on  farms,  were  O.  H. 
Kelley  and  W.  M.  Ireland  of  the  Post  Office  De- 
partment, William  Saunders  and  the  Reverend  A. 
B.  Grosh  of  the  Agricultural  Bureau,  the  Reverend 
John  Trimble  and  J.  R.  Thompson  of  the  Treasury 
Department,  and  F.  M.  McDowell,  a  pomologist  of 
Wayne,  New  York.  Kelley  and  Ireland  planned  a 
ritual  for  the  society;  Saunders  interested  a  few 
farmers  at  a  meeting  of  the  United  States  Porno- 
logical  Society  in  St.  Louis  in  August,  and  secured 
the  cooperation  of  McDowell;  the  other  men  helped 
these  four  in  corresponding  with  interested  farmers 
and  in  perfecting  the  ritual.  On  December  4, 1867, 
having  framed  a  constitution  and  adopted  the  motto 
Esto  perpetua,  they  met  and  constituted  themselves 
the  National  Grange  of  the  Patrons  of  Husbandry. 
Saunders  was  to  be  Master;  Thompson,  Lecturer; 
Ireland,  Treasurer;  and  Kelley,  Secretary. 

It  is  interesting  to  note,  in  view  of  the  subse- 
quent political  activity  in  which  the  movement  for 
agricultural  organization  became  inevitably  in- 
volved, that  the  founders  of  the  Grange  looked  for 


THE  INCEPTION  OF  THE  GRANGE    5 

advantages  to  come  to  the  farmer  through  intel- 
lectual and  social  intercourse,  not  through  political 
action.  Their  purpose  was  "the  advancement  of 
agriculture, "  but  they  expected  that  advancement 
to  be  an  educative  rather  than  a  legislative  process. 
It  was  to  that  end,  for  instance,  that  they  provided 
for  a  Grange  "Lecturer,"  a  man  whose  business  it 
was  to  prepare  for  each  meeting  a  program  apart 
from  the  prescribed  ritual  —  perhaps  a  paper  read 
by  one  of  the  members  or  an  address  by  a  visiting 
speaker.  With  this  plan  for  social  and  intellectual 
advancement,  then,  the  founders  of  the  Grange  set 
out  to  gain  members. 

During  the  first  four  years  the  order  grew  slow- 
ly, partly  because  of  the  mistakes  of  the  founders, 
partly  because  of  the  innate  conservatism  and  sus- 
picion of  the  average  farmer.  The  first  local  Grange 
was  organized  in  Washington.  It  was  made  up 
largely  of  government  clerks  and  their  wives  and 
served  less  to  advance  the  cause  of  agriculture  than 
to  test  the  ritual.  In  February,  1868,  Kelley  re- 
signed his  clerkship  in  the  Post  Office  Department 
and  turned  his  whole  attention  to  the  organization 
of  the  new  order.  His  colleagues,  in  optimism  or 
irony,  voted  him  a  salary  of  two  thousand  dollars  a 
year  and  traveling  expenses,  to  be  paid  from  the 


6  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

receipts  of  any  subordinate  Granges  he  should  es- 
tablish. Thus  authorized,  Kelley  bought  a  ticket 
for  Harrisburg,  and  with  two  dollars  and  a  half  in 
his  pocket,  started  out  to  work  his  way  to  Minne- 
sota by  organizing  Granges.  On  his  way  out  he 
sold  four  dispensations  for  the  establishment  of 
branch  organizations  —  three  for  Granges  in  Har- 
risburg, Columbus,  and  Chicago,  which  came  to 
nothing,  and  one  for  a  Grange  in  Fredonia,  New 
York,  which  was  the  first  regular,  active,  and  per- 
manent local  organization.  This,  it  is  important 
to  note,  was  established  as  a  result  of  correspond- 
ence with  a  farmer  of  that  place,  and  in  by  far  the 
smallest  town  of  the  four.  Kelley  seems  at  first  to 
have  made  the  mistake  of  attempting  to  establish 
the  order  in  the  large  cities,  where  it  had  no  native 
soil  in  which  to  grow. 

When  Kelley  revised  his  plan  and  began  to  work 
from  his  farm  in  Minnesota  and  among  neighbors 
whose  main  interest  was  in  agriculture,  he  was 
more  successful.  His  progress  was  not,  however, 
so  marked  as  to  insure  his  salary  and  expenses;  in 
fact,  the  whole  history  of  these  early  years  repre- 
sents the  hardest  kind  of  struggle  against  financial 
difficulties.  Later,  Kelley  wrote  of  this  difficult 
period :  "  If  all  great  enterprises,  to  be  permanent, 


THE  INCEPTION  OF  THE  GRANGE    7 

must  necessarily  start  from  small  beginnings,  our 
Order  is  all  right.  Its  foundation  was  laid  on  solid 
nothing  —  the  rock  of  poverty  —  and  there  is  no 
harder  material."  At  times  the  persistent  secre- 
tary found  himself  unable  even  to  buy  postage  for 
his  circular  letters.  His  friends  at  Washington  be- 
gan to  lose  interest  in  the  work  of  an  order  with 
a  treasury  "so  empty  that  a  five-cent  stamp  would 
need  an  introduction  before  it  would  feel  at  home 
in  it."  Their  only  letters  to  Kelley  during  this  try- 
ing time  were  written  to  remind  him  of  bills  owed 
by  the  order.  The  total  debt  was  not  more  than 
$150,  yet  neither  the  Washington  members  nor 
Kelley  could  find  funds  to  liquidate  it.  "My  dear 
brother,"  wrote  Kelley  to  Ireland,  "you  must  not 
swear  when  the  printer  comes  in.  .  .  .  When  they 
come  in  to  *  dun '  ask  them  to  take  a  seat;  light  your 
pipe;  lean  back  in  a  chair,  and  suggest  to  them  that 
some  plan  be  adopted  to  bring  in  ten  or  twenty 
members,  and  thus  furnish  funds  to  pay  their  bills." 
A  note  of  $39,  in  the  hands  of  one  Mr.  Bean,  caused 
the  members  in  Washington  further  embarrass- 
ment at  this  time  and  occasioned  a  gleam  of  humor 
in  one  of  Kelley's  letters.  Bean's  calling  on  the 
men  at  Washington,  he  wrote,  at  least  reminded 
them  of  the  absentee,  and  to  be  cursed  by  an  old 


8  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

friend  was  better  than  to  be  forgotten.  "I  sug- 
gest," he  continued,  "that  Granges  use  black  and 
white  Beans  for  ballots." 

In  spite  of  all  his  difficulties,  Kelley  stubbornly 
continued  his  endeavor  and  kept  up  the  fiction  of  a 
powerful  central  order  at  the  capital  by  circulat- 
ing photographs  of  the  founders  and  letters  which 
spoke  in  glowing  terms  of  the  great  national  organi- 
zation of  the  Patrons  of  Husbandry.  "It  must  be 
advertised  as  vigorously  as  if  it  were  a  patent  medi- 
cine, "  he  said;  and  to  that  end  he  wrote  articles  for 
leading  agricultural  papers,  persuaded  them  to  pub- 
lish the  constitution  of  the  Grange,  and  inserted 
from  time  to  time  press  notices  which  kept  the  or- 
ganization before  the  public  eye.  In  May,  1868, 
came  the  first  fruits  of  all  this  correspondence  and 
advertisement  —  the  establishment  of  a  Grange  at 
Newton,  Iowa.  In  September,  the  first  permanent 
Grange  in  Minnesota,  the  North  Star  Grange,  was 
established  at  St.  Paul  with  the  assistance  of  Colonel 
D.  A.  Robertson.  This  gentleman  and  his  associ- 
ates interested  themselves  in  spreading  the  order. 
They  revised  the  Grange  circulars  to  appeal  to  the 
farmer's  pocketbook,  emphasizing  the  fact  that  the 
order  offered  a  means  of  protection  against  corpora- 
tions and  opportunities  for  cooperative  buying  and 


THE  INCEPTION  OF  THE  GRANGE         9 

selling.  This  practical  appeal  was  more  effective 
than  the  previous  idealistic  propaganda:  two  addi- 
tional Granges  were  established  before  the  end  of 
the  year;  a  state  Grange  was  constituted  early  in 
the  next  year;  and  by  the  end  of  1869  there  were  in 
Minnesota  thirty-seven  active  Granges.  In  the 
spring  of  1869  Kelley  went  East  and,  after  visiting 
the  thriving  Grange  in  Fredonia,  he  made  his  report 
at  Washington  to  the  members  of  the  National 
Grange,  who  listened  perfunctorily,  passed  a  few 
laws,  and  relapsed  into  indifference  after  this  first 
regular  annual  session. 

But  however  indifferent  the  members  of  the  Na- 
tional Grange  might  be  as  to  the  fate  of  the  organi- 
zation they  had  so  irresponsibly  fathered,  Kelley 
was  zealous  and  untiring  in  its  behalf.  That  the 
founders  did  not  deny  their  parenthood  was  enough 
for  him;  he  returned  to  his  home  with  high  hopes 
for  the  future.  With  the  aid  of  his  niece  he  carried 
on  an  indefatigible  correspondence  which  soon 
brought  tangible  returns.  In  October,  1870,  Kel- 
ley moved  his  headquarters  to  Washington.  By 
the  end  of  the  year  the  Order  had  penetrated  nine 
States  of  the  Union,  and  correspondence  looking  to 
its  establishment  in  seven  more  States  was  well 
under  way.  Though  Granges  had  been  planted  as 


10  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

far  east  as  Vermont  and  New  Jersey  and  as  far 
south  as  Mississippi  and  South  Carolina,  the  life  of 
the  order  as  yet  centered  in  Minnesota,  Iowa,  Wis- 
consin, Illinois,  and  Indiana.  These  were  the  only 
States  in  which,  in  its  four  years  of  activity  the 
Grange  had  really  taken  root;  in  other  States  only 
sporadic  local  Granges  sprang  up.  The  method  of 
organization,  however,  had  been  found  and  tested. 
When  a  few  active  subordinate  Granges  had  been 
established  in  a  State,  they  convened  as  a  tempor- 
ary state  Grange,  the  master  of  which  appointed 
deputies  to  organize  other  subordinate  Granges 
throughout  the  State.  The  initiation  fees,  gener- 
ally three  dollars  for  men  and  fifty  cents  for  women, 
paid  the  expenses  of  organization  —  fifteen  dollars 
to  the  deputy,  and  not  infrequently  a  small  sum  to 
the  state  Grange.  What  was  left  went  into  the 
treasury  of  the  local  Grange.  Thus  by  the  end  of 
1871  the  ways  and  means  of  spreading  the  Grange 
had  been  devised.  All  that  was  now  needed  was 
some  impelling  motive  which  should  urge  the 
farmers  to  enter  and  support  the  organization. 


CHAPTER  H 

THE   RISING    SPIRIT    OF    UNREST 

THE  decade  of  the  seventies  witnessed  the  subsid- 
ence, if  not  the  solution,  of  a  problem  which  had 
vexed  American  history  for  half  a  century  —  the 
reconciliation  of  two  incompatible  social  and  eco- 
nomic systems,  the  North  and  the  South.  It  wit- 
nessed at  the  same  time  the  rise  of  another  great 
problem,  even  yet  unsolved  —  the  preservation  of 
equality  of  opportunity,  of  democracy,  economic  as 
well  as  political,  in  the  face  of  the  rising  power  and 
influence  of  great  accumulations  and  combinations 
of  wealth.  Almost  before  the  battle  smoke  of  the 
Civil  War  had  rolled  away,  dissatisfaction  with 
prevailing  conditions  both  political  and  economic 
began  to  show  itself. 

The  close  of  the  war  naturally  found  the  Repub- 
lican or  Union  party  in  control  throughout  the 
North.  Branded  with  the  opprobrium  of  having 
opposed  the  conduct  of  the  war,  the  Democratic 

11 


12  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

party  remained  impotent  for  a  number  of  years; 
and  Ulysses  S.  Grant,  the  nation's  greatest  military 
hero,  was  easily  elected  to  the  presidency  on  the 
Republican  ticket  in  1868.  In  the  latter  part  of 
Grant's  first  term,  however,  hostility  began  to  mani- 
fest itself  among  the  Republicans  themselves  to- 
ward the  politicians  in  control  at  Washington. 
Several  causes  tended  to  alienate  from  the  Presi- 
dent and  his  advisers  the  sympathies  of  many  of 
the  less  partisan  and  less  prejudiced  Republicans 
throughout  the  North.  Charges  of  corruption  and 
maladministration  were  rife  and  had  much  founda- 
tion in  truth.  Even  if  Grant  himself  was  not  con- 
sciously dishonest  in  his  application  of  the  spoils 
system  and  in  his  willingness  to  receive  reward  in 
return  for  political  favors,  he  certainly  can  be 
justly  charged  with  the  disposition  to  trust  too 
blindly  in  his  friends  and  to  choose  men  for  public 
office  rather  because  of  his  personal  preferences 
than  because  of  their  qualifications  for  positions 
of  trust. 

Grant's  enemies  declared,  moreover,  with  con- 
siderable truth  that  the  man  was  a  military  auto- 
crat, unfit  for  the  highest  civil  position  in  a  democ- 
racy. His  high-handed  policy  in  respect  to  Recon- 
struction in  the  South  evoked  opposition  from  those 


THE  RISING  SPIRIT  OP  UNREST         13 

Northern  Republicans  whose  critical  sense  was  not 
entirely  blinded  by  sectional  prejudice  and  passion. 
The  keener-sighted  of  the  Northerners  began  to 
suspect  that  Reconstruction  in  the  South  often 
amounted  to  little  more  than  the  looting  of  the 
governments  of  the  Southern  States  by  the  greedy 
freedmen  and  the  unscrupulous  carpetbaggers,  with 
the  troops  of  the  United  States  standing  by  to 
protect  the  looters.  In  1871,  under  color  of  neces- 
sity arising  from  the  intimidation  of  voters  in  a  few 
sections  of  the  South,  Congress  passed  a  stringent 
act,  empowering  the  President  to  suspend  the  writ 
of  habeas  corpus  and  to  use  the  military  at  any  time 
to  suppress  disturbances  or  attempts  to  intimidate 
voters.  This  act,  in  the  hands  of  radicals,  gave 
the  carpetbag  governments  of  the  Southern  States 
practically  unlimited  powers.  Any  citizens  who 
worked  against  the  existing  administrations,  how- 
ever peacefully,  might  be  charged  with  intimida- 
tion of  voters  and  prosecuted  under  the  new  act. 
Thus  these  radical  governments  were  made  practi- 
cally self-perpetuating.  When  their  corruption, 
wastefulness,  and  inefficiency  became  evident, 
many  people  in  the  North  frankly  condemned  them 
and  the  Federal  Government  which  continued  to 
support  them. 


14  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

This  dissatisfaction  with  the  Administration  on 
the  part  of  Republicans  and  independents  came  to 
a  head  in  1872  in  the  Liberal-Republican  move- 
ment. As  early  as  1870  a  group  of  Republicans  in 
Missouri,  disgusted  by  the  excesses  of  the  radicals 
in  that  State  in  the  proscription  of  former  Con- 
federate sympathizers,  had  led  a  bolt  from  the 
party,  had  nominated  B.  Gratz  Brown  for  governor, 
and,  with  the  assistance  of  the  Democrats,  had  won 
the  election.  The  real  leader  of  this  movement 
was  Senator  Carl  Schurz,  under  whose  influence 
the  new  party  in  Missouri  declared  not  only  for  the 
removal  of  political  disabilities  but  also  for  tariff 
revision  and  civil  service  reform  and  manifested 
opposition  to  the  alienation  of  the  public  domain 
to  private  corporations  and  to  all  schemes  for  the 
repudiation  of  any  part  of  the  national  debt.  Simi- 
lar splits  in  the  Republican  party  took  place  soon 
afterwards  in  other  States,  and  in  1872  the  Missouri 
Liberals  called  a  convention  to  meet  at  Cincinnati 
for  the  purpose  of  nominating  a  candidate  for  the 
presidency. 

The  new  party  was  a  coalition  of  rather  diverse 
elements.  Prominent  tariff  reformers,  members  of 
the  Free  Trade  League,  such  as  David  A.  Wells  and 
Edward  L.  Godkin  of  the  Nation,  advocates  of  civil 


THE  RISING  SPIRIT  OF  UNREST         15 

service  reform,  of  whom  Carl  Schurz  was  a  leading 
representative,  and  especially  opponents  of  the  re- 
construction measures  of  the  Administration,  such 
as  Judge  David  Davis  and  Horace  Greeley,  saw 
an  opportunity  to  promote  their  favorite  policies 
through  this  new  party  organization.  To  these 
sincere  reformers  were  soon  added  such  disgruntled 
politicians  as  A.  G.  Curtin  of  Pennsylvania  and 
R.  E.  Fenton  of  New  York,  who  sought  revenge  for 
the  support  which  the  Administration  had  given 
to  their  personal  rivals.  The  principal  bond  of 
union  was  the  common  desire  to  prevent  the  reelec- 
tion of  Grant.  The  platform  adopted  by  the  Cin- 
cinnati convention  reflected  the  composition  of  the 
party.  Opening  with  a  bitter  denunciation  of  the 
President,  it  declared  in  no  uncertain  terms  for  civil 
service  reform  and  the  immediate  and  complete  re- 
moval of  political  disabilities.  On  the  tariff,  how- 
ever, the  party  could  come  to  no  agreement;  the 
free  traders  were  unable  to  overcome  the  opposi- 
tion of  Horace  Greeley  and  his  protectionist  fol- 
lowers; and  the  outcome  was  the  reference  of  the 
question  "to  the  people  in  their  congressional 
districts  and  the  decision  of  Congress." 

The  leading  candidates  for  nomination  for  the 
presidency  were  Charles  Francis  Adams,  David 


16  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

Davis,  Horace  Greeley,  Lyman  Trumbull,  and  B. 
Gratz  Brown.  From  these  men,  as  a  result  of 
manipulation,  the  convention  unhappily  selected 
the  one  least  suited  to  lead  the  party  to  victory  — 
Horace  Greeley.  The  only  hope  of  success  for  the 
movement  was  in  cooperation  with  that  very  Demo- 
cratic party  whose  principles,  policies,  and  leaders, 
Greeley  in  his  editorials  had  unsparingly  condemned 
for  years.  His  extreme  protectionism  repelled  not 
only  the  Democrats  but  the  tariff  reformers  who 
had  played  an  important  part  in  the  organization 
of  the  Liberal  Republican  party.  Conservatives 
of  both  parties  distrusted  him  as  a  man  with  a  dan- 
gerous propensity  to  advocate  "isms,"  a  theoreti- 
cal politician  more  objectionable  than  the  practical 
man  of  machine  politics,  and  far  more  likely  to  dis- 
turb the  existing  state  of  affairs  and  to  overturn  the 
business  of  the  country  in  his  efforts  at  reform.  As 
the  Nation  expressed  it,  "Greeley  appears  to  be 
*  boiled  crow '  to  more  of  his  fellow  citizens  than  any 
other  candidate  for  office  in  this  or  any  other  age  of 
which  we  have  record." 

The  regular  Republican  convention  renominated 
Grant,  and  the  Democrats,  as  the  only  chance  of 
victory,  swallowed  the  candidate  and  the  platform 
of  the  Liberals.  Doubtless  Greeley's  opposition  to 


THE  RISING  SPIRIT  OP  UNREST         17 

the  radical  reconstruction  measures  and  the  fact 
that  he  had  signed  Jefferson  Davis's  bail-bond 
made  the  "crow"  more  palatable  to  the  Southern 
Democrats.  In  the  campaign  Greeley's  brilliant 
speeches  were  listened  to  with  great  respect.  His 
tour  was  a  personal  triumph;  but  the  very  voters 
who  hung  eagerly  on  his  speeches  felt  him  to  be  too 
impulsive  and  opinionated  to  be  trusted  with  presi- 
dential powers.  They  knew  the  worst  which  might 
be  expected  of  Grant;  they  could  not  guess  the  ruin 
which  Greeley's  dynamic  powers  might  bring  on 
the  country  if  he  used  them  unwisely.  In  the  end 
many  of  the  original  leaders  of  the  Liberal  move- 
ment supported  Grant  as  the  lesser  of  two  evils. 
The  Liberal  defection  from  the  Republican  ranks 
was  more  than  offset  by  the  refusal  of  Democrats 
to  vote  for  Greeley,  and  Grant  was  triumphantly 
reelected. 

The  Liberal  Republican  party  was  undoubtedly 
weakened  by  the  unfortunate  selection  of  their  can- 
didate, but  it  scarcely  could  have  been  victorious 
with  another  candidate.  The  movement  was  dis- 
tinctly one  of  leaders  rather  than  of  the  masses,  and 
the  things  for  which  it  stood  most  specifically  — 
the  removal  of  political  disabilities  in  the  South  and 
civil  service  reform  —  awakened  little  enthusiasm 


18  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

among  the  farmers  of  the  West.  These  farmers  on 
the  other  hand  were  beginning  to  be  very  much  in- 
terested in  a  number  of  economic  reforms  which 
would  vitally  affect  their  welfare,  such  as  the  reduc- 
tion and  readjustment  of  the  burden  of  taxation, 
the  control  of  corporations  in  the  interests  of  the 
people,  the  reduction  and  regulation  of  the  cost 
of  transporation,  and  an  increase  in  the  currency 
supply.  Some  of  these  propositions  occasionally 
received  recognition  in  Liberal  speeches  and  plat- 
forms, but  several  of  them  were  anathema  to  many 
of  the  Eastern  leaders  of  that  movement.  Had 
these  leaders  been  gifted  with  vision  broad  enough 
to  enable  them  to  appreciate  the  vital  economic  and 
social  problems  of  the  West,  the  Liberal  Republi- 
can movement  might  perhaps  have  caught  the 
ground  swell  of  agrarian  discontent,  and  the  out- 
come might  then  have  been  the  formation  of  an  en- 
during national  party  of  liberal  tendencies  broader 
and  more  progressive  than  the  Liberal  Republican 
party  yet  less  likely  to  be  swept  into  the  vagaries 
of  extreme  radicalism  than  were  the  Anti-Mo- 
nopoly and  Greenback  parties  of  after  years.  A 
number  of  western  Liberals  such  as  A.  Scott  Sloan 
in  Wisconsin  and  Ignatius  Donnelly  in  Minnesota 
championed  the  farmers'  cause,  it  is  true,  and  in 


THE  RISING  SPIRIT  OF  UNREST         19 

some  States  there  was  a  fusion  of  party  organiza- 
tions; but  men  like  Schurz  and  Trumbull  held  aloof 
from  these  radical  movements,  while  Easterners 
like  Godkin  of  the  Nation  met  them  with  ridicule 
and  invective. 

The  period  from  1870  to  1873  has  been  character- 
ized as  one  of  rampant  prosperity,  and  such  it  was 
for  the  commercial,  the  manufacturing,  and  especi- 
ally the  speculative  interests  of  the  country.  For 
the  farmers,  however,  it  was  a  period  of  bitter  de- 
pression. The  years  immediately  following  the 
close  of  the  Civil  War  had  seen  a  tremendous  ex- 
pansion of  production,  particularly  of  the  staple 
crops.  The  demobilization  of  the  armies,  the  clos- 
ing of  war  industries,  increased  immigration,  the 
homestead  law,  the  introduction  of  improved 
machinery,  and  the  rapid  advance  of  the  railroads 
had  all  combined  to  drive  the  agricultural  frontier 
westward  by  leaps  and  bounds  until  it  had  almost 
reached  the  limit  of  successful  cultivation  under 
conditions  which  then  prevailed.  As  crop  acreage 
and  production  increased,  prices  went  down  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  law  of  supply  and  demand,  and 
farmers  all  over  the  country  found  it  difficult  to 
make  a  living. 

In  the  West  and  South  —  the  great  agricultural 


20  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

districts  of  the  country  —  the  farmers  commonly 
bought  their  supplies  and  implements  on  credit  or 
mortgaged  their  crops  in  advance;  and  their  profits 
at  best  were  so  slight  that  one  bad  season  might  put 
them  thereafter  entirely  in  the  power  of  their  credi- 
tors and  force  them  to  sell  their  crops  on  their  credi- 
tors' terms.  Many  farms  were  heavily  mortgaged, 
too,  at  rates  of  interest  that  ate  up  the  farmers' 
profits.  During  and  after  the  Civil  War  the  fluc- 
tuation of  the  currency  and  the  high  tariff  worked 
especial  hardship  on  the  farmers  as  producers  of 
staples  which  must  be  sold  abroad  in  competition 
with  European  products  and  as  consumers  of  manu- 
factured articles  which  must  be  bought  at  home 
at  prices  made  arbitrarily  high  by  the  protective 
tariff.  In  earlier  times,  farmers  thus  harassed 
would  have  struck  their  tents  and  moved  farther 
west,  taking  up  desirable  land  on  the  frontier  and 
starting  out  in  a  fresh  field  of  opportunity.  It  was 
still  possible  for  farmers  to  go  west,  and  many  did 
so  but  only  to  find  that  the  opportunity  for  eco- 
nomic independence  on  the  edge  of  settlement  had 
largely  disappeared.  The  era  of  the  self-sufficing 
pioneer  was  drawing  to  a  close,  and  the  farmer 
on  the  frontier,  forced  by  natural  conditions  over 
which  he  had  no  control  ta  engage  in  the  production 


THE  RISING  SPIRIT  OP  UNREST        21 

of  staples,  was  fully  as  dependent  on  the  market  and 
on  transportation  facilities  as  was  his  competitor  in 
the  East. 

In  the  fall  of  1873  came  the  greatest  panic  in  the 
history  of  the  nation,  and  a  period  of  financial  de- 
pression began  which  lasted  throughout  the  decade, 
restricting  industry,  commerce,  and  even  immigra- 
tion. On  the  farmers  the  blow  fell  with  special 
severity.  At  the  very  time  when  they  found  it 
most  difficult  to  realize  profit  on  their  sales  of  prod- 
uce, creditors  who  had  hitherto  carried  their  debts 
from  year  to  year  became. insistent  for  payment. 
When  mortgages  fell  due,  it  was  well-nigh  im- 
possible to  renew  them;  and  many  a  farmer  saw 
years  of  labor  go  for  nothing  in  a  heart-breaking 
foreclosure  sale.  It  was  difficult  to  get  even  short- 
term  loans,  running  from  seed-time  to  harvest. 
This  important  function  of  lending  money  to  pay 
for  labor  and  thus  secure  a  larger  crop,  which  has 
only  recently  been  assumed  by  the  Government  in 
its  establishment  of  farm  loan  banks,  had  been  per- 
formed by  private  capitalists  who  asked  usurious 
rates  of  interest.  The  farmers'  protests  against 
these  rates  had  been  loud;  and  now,  when  they 
found  themselves  unable  to  get  loans  at  any  rate 
whatever,  their  complaints  naturally  increased. 


22  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

Looking  around  for  one  cause  to  which  to  attribute 
all  their  misfortunes,  they  pitched  upon  the  corpo- 
rations or  monopolies,  as  they  chose  to  call  them, 
and  especially  upon  the  railroads. 

At  first  the  farmers  had  looked  upon  the  coming 
of  the  railroads  as  an  unmixed  blessing.  The  rail- 
road had  meant  the  opening  up  of  new  territory, 
the  establishment  of  channels  of  transportation 
by  which  they  could  send  their  crops  to  market. 
Without  the  railroad,  the  farmer  who  did  not  live 
near  a  navigable  stream  must  remain  a  backwoods- 
man; he  must  make  his  own  farm  or  his  immediate 
community  a  self-sufficing  unit;  he  must  get  from 
his  own  land  bread  and  meat  and  clothing  for  his 
family;  he  must  be  stock-raiser,  grain-grower,  far- 
rier, tinker,  soap-maker,  tanner,  chandler  —  Jack- 
of-all-trades  and  master  of  none.  With  the  rail- 
road he  gained  access  to  markets  and  the  opportu- 
nity to  specialize  in  one  kind  of  farming;  he  could 
now  sell  his  produce  and  buy  in  exchange  many  of 
the  articles  he  had  previously  made  for  himself  at 
the  expense  of  much  time  and  labor.  Many  farm- 
ers and  f  arming  communities  bought  railroad  bonds 
in  the  endeavor  to  increase  transportation  facili- 
ties; all  were  heartily  in  sympathy  with  the  policy 
of  the  Government  in  granting  to  corporations  land 


THE  RISING  SPIRIT  OP  UNREST         23 

along  the  route  of  the  railways  which  they  were 
to  construct. 

By  1873,  however,  the  Government  had  actually 
given  to  the  railroads  about  thirty-five  million 
acres,  and  was  pledged  to  give  to  the  Pacific  roads 
alone  about  one  hundred  and  forty-five  million 
acres  more.  Land  was  now  not  so  plentiful  as  it 
had  been  in  1850,  when  this  policy  had  been  in- 
augurated, and  the  farmers  were  naturally  aggrieved 
that  the  railroads  should  own  so  much  desirable 
land  and  should  either  hold  it  for  speculative  pur- 
poses or  demand  for  it  prices  much  higher  than  the 
Government  had  asked  for  land  adjacent  to  it 
and  no  less  valuable.  Moreover,  when  railroads 
were  merged  and  reorganized  or  passed  into  the 
hands  of  receivers  the  shares  held  by  farmers  were 
frequently  wiped  out  or  were  greatly  decreased  in 
value.  Often  railroad  stock  had  been  "watered" 
to  such  an  extent  that  high  freight  charges  were 
necessary  in  order  to  permit  the  payment  of  divi- 
dends. Thus  the  farmer  might  find  himself  with- 
out his  railroad  stock,  with  a  mortgage  on  his  land 
which  he  had  incurred  in  order  to  buy  the  stock, 
with  an  increased  burden  of  taxation  because 
his  township  had  also  been  gullible  enough  to 
buy  stock,  and  with  a  railroad  whose  excessive 


24  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

rates  allowed  him  but  a  narrow  margin  of  profit 
on  his  produce. 

When  the  farmers  sought  political  remedies  for 
their  economic  ills,  they  discovered  that,  as  a  class, 
they  had  little  representation  or  influence  either  in 
Congress  or  in  the  state  legislatures.  Before  the 
Civil  War  the  Southern  planter  had  represented 
agricultural  interests  in  Congress  fairly  well;  after 
the  War  the  dominance  of  Northern  interests  left 
the  Western  farmer  without  his  traditional  ally 
in  the  South.  Political  power  was  concentrated  in 
the  East  and  in  the  urban  sections  of  the  West. 
Members  of  Congress  were  increasingly  likely  to  be 
from  the  manufacturing  classes  or  from  the  legal 
profession,  which  sympathized  with  these  classes 
rather  than  with  the  agriculturists.  Only  about 
seven  per  cent  of  the  members  of  Congress  were 
farmers;  yet  in  1870  forty-seven  per  cent  of  the 
population  was  engaged  in  agriculture.  The  only 
remedy  for  the  farmers  was  to  organize  themselves 
as  a  class  in  order  to  promote  their  common  welfare. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  GRANGER  MOVEMENT  AT  FLOOD  TIDE 

WITH  these  real  or  fancied  grievances  crying  for  re- 
dress, the  farmers  soon  turned  to  the  Grange  as  the 
weapon  ready  at  hand  to  combat  the  forces  which 
they  believed  were  conspiring  to  crush  them.  In 
1872  began  the  real  spread  of  the  order.  Where 
the  Grange  had  previously  reckoned  in  terms  of 
hundreds  of  new  lodges,  it  now  began  to  speak 
of  thousands.  State  Granges  were  established  in 
States  where  the  year  before  the  organization  had 
obtained  but  a  precarious  foothold;  pioneer  local 
Granges  invaded  regions  which  hitherto  had  been 
impenetrable.  Although  the  only  States  which 
were  thoroughly  organized  were  Iowa,  Minnesota, 
South  Carolina,  and  Mississippi,  the  rapid  spread 
of  the  order  into  other  States  and  its  intensive 
growth  in  regions  so  far  apart  gave  promise  of  its 
ultimate  development  into  a  national  movement. 
This  development  was,  to  be  sure,  not  without 

25 


26  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

opposition.  When  the  Grangers  began  to  speak  of 
their  function  in  terms  of  business  and  political  co- 
operation, the  forces  against  which  they  were  unit- 
ing took  alarm.  The  commission  men  and  local 
merchants  of  the  South  were  especially  apprehen- 
sive and,  it  is  said,  sometimes  foreclosed  the  mort- 
gages of  planters  who  were  so  independent  as  to  join 
the  order.  But  here,  as  elsewhere,  persecution  de- 
feated its  own  end;  the  opposition  of  their  enemies 
convinced  the  farmers  of  the  merits  of  the  Grange. 
In  the  East,  several  circumstances  retarded  the 
movement.  In  the  first  place,  the  Eastern  farmer 
had  for  some  time  felt  the  Western  farmer  to  be  his 
serious  rival.  The  Westerner  had  larger  acreage 
and  larger  yields  from  his  virgin  soil  than  the 
Easterner  from  his  smaller  tracts  of  well-nigh  ex- 
hausted land.  What  crops  the  latter  did  produce 
he  must  sell  in  competition  with  the  Western  crops, 
and  he  was  not  eager  to  lower  freight  charges  for 
his  competitor.  A  second  deterrent  to  the  growth 
of  the  order  in  the  East  was  the  organization  of  two 
Granges  among  the  commission  men  and  the  grain 
dealers  of  Boston  and  New  York,  under  the  segis  of 
that  clause  of  the  constitution  which  declared  any 
person  interested  in  agriculture  to  be  eligible  to 
membership  in  the  order.  Though  the  storm  of 


GRANGER  MOVEMENT  AT  FLOOD  TIDE  27 

protest  which  arose  all  over  the  country  against 
this  betrayal  to  the  enemy  resulted  in  the  revok- 
ing of  the  charters  for  these  Granges,  the  Eastern 
farmer  did  not  soon  forget  the  incident. 

The  year  1873  is  important  hi  the  annals  of  the 
Grange  because  it  marks  the  retirement  of  the 
"  founders  "  from  power.  In  January  of  that  year, 
at  the  sixth  session  of  the  National  Grange,  the 
temporary  organization  of  government  clerks  was 
replaced  by  a  permanent  corporation,  officered  by 
farmers.  Kelley  was  reflected  Secretary;  Dudley 
W.  Adams  of  Iowa  was  made  Master;  and  William 
Saunders,  erstwhile  Master  of  the  National  Grange, 
D.  Wyatt  Aiken  of  South  Carolina,  and  E.  R.  Shank- 
land  of  Iowa  were  elected  to  the  executive  commit- 
tee. The  substitution  of  alert  and  eager  workers, 
already  experienced  in  organizing  Granges,  for  the 
dead  wood  of  the  Washington  bureaucrats  gave  the 
order  a  fresh  impetus  to  growth.  From  the  spring 
of  1873  to  the  following  spring  the  number  of 
granges  more  than  quadrupled,  and  the  increase 
again  centered  mainly  in  the  Middle  West. 

By  the  end  of  1873  the  Grange  had  penetrated 
all  but  four  States  —  Connecticut,  Rhode  Island, 
Delaware,  and  Nevada  —  and  there  were  thirty- 
two  state  Granges  in  existence.  The  movement 


28  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

was  now  well  defined  and  national  in  scope,  so  that 
the  seventh  annual  session  of  the  National  Grange, 
which  took  place  in  St.  Louis  in  February,  1874,  at- 
tracted much  interest  and  comment.  Thirty-three 
men  and  twelve  women  attended  the  meetings,  rep- 
resenting thirty-two  state  and  territorial  Granges 
and  about  half  a  million  members.  Their  most 
important  act  was  the  adoption  of  the  "Declara- 
tion of  Purposes  of  the  National  Grange,"  sub- 
scribed to  then  and  now  as  the  platform  of  the 
Patrons  and  copied  with  minor  modifications  by 
many  later  agricultural  organizations  in  the  United 
States.  The  general  purpose  of  the  Patrons  was 
"to  labor  for  the  good  of  our  Order,  our  Country, 
and  Mankind."  This  altruistic  ideal  was  to  find 
practical  application  in  efforts  to  enhance  the  com- 
fort and  attractions  of  homes,  to  maintain  the  laws, 
to  advance  agricultural  and  industrial  education, 
to  diversify  crops,  to  systematize  farm  work,  to 
establish  cooperative  buying  and  selling,  to  suppress 
personal,  local,  sectional,  and  national  prejudices, 
and  to  discountenance  "the  credit  system,  the 
fashion  system,  and  every  other  system  tending  to 
prodigality  and  bankruptcy."  As  to  business,  the 
Patrons  declared  themselves  enemies  not  of  capital 
but  of  the  tyranny  of  monopolies,  not  of  railroads 


GRANGER  MOVEMENT  AT  FLOOD  TIDE  29 

but  of  their  high  freight  tariffs  and  monopoly 
of  transportation.  In  politics,  too,  they  main- 
tained a  rather  nice  balance:  the  Grange  was  not 
to  be  a  political  or  party  organization,  but  its 
members  were  to  perform  their  political  duties  as 
individual  citizens. 

It  could  hardly  be  expected  that  the  program 
of  the  Grange  would  satisfy  all  farmers.  For  the 
agricultural  discontent,  as  for  any  other  dissatis- 
faction, numerous  panaceas  were  proposed,  the  ad- 
vocates of  each  of  which  scorned  all  the  others  and 
insisted  on  their  particular  remedy.  Some  farmers 
objected  to  the  Grange  because  it  was  a  secret 
organization;  others,  because  it  was  nonpartisan. 
For  some  the  organization  was  too  conservative; 
for  others,  too  radical.  Yet  all  these  objectors  felt 
the  need  of  some  sort  of  organization  among  the 
farmers,  very  much  as  the  trade-unionist  and  the 
socialist,  though  widely  divergent  in  program, 
agree  that  the  workers  must  unite  in  order  to  better 
their  condition.  Hence  during  these  years  of  activ- 
ity on  the  part  of  the  Grange  many  other  agricul- 
tural societies  were  formed,  differing  from  the 
Patrons  of  Husbandry  in  specific  program  rather 
than  in  general  purpose. 

The  most  important  of  these  societies  were  the 


30  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

fanners'  clubs,  at  first  more  or  less  independent  of 
each  other  but  later  banded  together  in  state  asso- 
ciations. The  most  striking  differences  of  these 
clubs  from  the  Granges  were  their  lack  of  secrecy 
and  their  avowed  political  purposes.  Their  estab- 
lishment marks  the  definite  entrance  of  the  farmers 
as  a  class  into  politics.  During  the  years  1872  to 
1875  the  independent  farmers'  organizations  multi- 
plied much  as  the  Granges  did  and  for  the  same 
reasons.  The  Middle  West  again  was  the  scene 
of  their  greatest  power.  In  Illinois  this  movement 
began  even  before  the  Grange  appeared  in  the 
State,  and  its  growth  during  the  early  seventies 
paralleled  that  of  the  secret  order.  In  other  States 
also,  notably  in  Kansas,  there  sprang  up  at  this 
time  agricultural  clubs  of  political  complexion,  and 
where  they  existed  in  considerable  numbers  they 
generally  took  the  lead  in  the  political  activities  of 
the  farmers'  movement.  Where  the  Grange  had 
the  field  practically  to  itself,  as  in  Iowa  and  Minne- 
sota, the  restriction  in  the  constitution  of  the  order 
as  to  political  or  partisan  activity  was  evaded  by 
the  simple  expedient  of  holding  meetings  "outside 
the  gate, "  at  which  platforms  were  adopted,  can- 
didates nominated,  and  plans  made  for  county, 
district,  and  state  conventions. 


GRANGER  MOVEMENT  AT  FLOOD  TIDE  31 

In  some  cases  the  farmers  hoped,  by  a  show  of 
strength,  to  achieve  the  desired  results  through  one 
or  both  of  the  old  parties,  but  they  soon  decided 
that  they  could  enter  politics  effectively  only  by 
way  of  a  third  party.  The  professional  politicians 
were  not  inclined  to  espouse  new  and  radical  issues 
which  might  lead  to  the  disruption  of  party  lines. 
The  outcome,  therefore,  was  the  establishment  of 
new  parties  in  eleven  of  the  Western  States  during 
1873  and  1874.  Known  variously  as  Independent, 
Reform,  Anti-Monopoly,  or  Farmers'  parties,  these 
organizations  were  all  parts  of  the  same  general 
movement,  and  then*  platforms  were  quite  similar. 
The  paramount  demands  were:  first,  the  subjection 
of  corporations,  and  especially  of  railroad  corpora- 
tions, to  the  control  of  the  State;  and  second,  re- 
form and  economy  in  government.  After  the  new 
parties  were  well  under  way,  the  Democrats  in 
most  of  the  States,  being  hi  a  hopeless  minority, 
made  common  cause  with  them  in  the  hope  of  thus 
compassing  the  defeat  of  their  hereditary  rivals,  the 
old-line  Republicans.  In  Missouri,  however,  where 
the  Democracy  had  been  restored  to  power  by 
the  Liberal-Republican  movement,  the  new  party 
received  the  support  of  the  Republicans. 

Illinois,  where  the  farmers  were  first  thoroughly 


32  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

organized  into  clubs  and  Granges,  was  naturally  the 
first  State  in  which  they  took  effective  political  ac- 
tion. The  agitation  for  railroad  regulation,  which 
began  in  Illinois  in  the  sixties,  had  caused  the  new 
state  constitution  of  1870  to  include  mandatory 
provisions  directing  the  legislature  to  pass  laws  to 
prevent  extortion  and  unjust  discrimination  in  rail- 
way charges.  One  of  the  acts  passed  by  the  Legis- 
lature of  1871  in  an  attempt  to  carry  out  these  in- 
structions was  declared  unconstitutional  by  the 
state  supreme  court  in  January,  1873.  This  was 
the  spark  to  the  tinder.  In  the  following  April  the 
farmers  flocked  to  a  convention  at  the  state  capital 
and  so  impressed  the  legislators  that  they  passed 
more  stringent  and  effective  laws  for  the  regulation 
of  railroads.  But  the  politicians  had  a  still  greater 
surprise  in  store  for  them.  In  the  elections  of 
judges  in  June,  the  farmers  retired  from  office  the 
judge  who  had  declared  their  railroad  law  uncon- 
stitutional and  elected  their  own  candidates  for  the 
two  vacancies  in  the  supreme  court  and  for  many 
of  the  vacancies  in  the  circuit  courts. 

Now  began  a  vigorous  campaign  for  the  election 
of  farmers'  candidates  in  the  county  elections  in  the 
fall.  So  many  political  meetings  were  held  on  In- 
dependence Day  in  1873  that  it  was  referred  to  as 


GRANGER  MOVEMENT  AT  FLOOD  TIDE   33 

the  "Farmers'  Fourth  of  July."  This  had  always 
been  the  greatest  day  of  the  farmer's  year,  for  it 
meant  opportunity  for  social  and  intellectual  en- 
joyment in  the  picnics  and  celebrations  which 
brought  neighbors  together  in  hilarious  good-fel- 
lowship. In  1873,  however,  the  gatherings  took 
on  unwonted  seriousness.  The  accustomed  spread- 
eagle  oratory  gave  place  to  impassioned  denuncia- 
tion of  corporations  and  to  the  solemn  reading  of  a 
Farmers'  Declaration  of  Independence.  "When,  in 
the  course  of  human  events,"  this  document  begins 
in  words  familiar  to  every  schoolboy  orator,  "it 
becomes  necessary  for  a  class  of  the  people,  suffer- 
ing from  long  continued  systems  of  oppression  and 
abuse,  to  rouse  themselves  from  an  apathetic  in- 
difference to  their  own  interests,  which  has  become 
habitual  ...  a  decent  respect  for  the  opinions  of 
mankind  requires  that  they  should  declare  the 
causes  that  impel  them  to  a  course  so  necessary  to 
their  own  protection."  Then  comes  a  statement 
of  "self-evident  truths,"  a  catalogue  of  the  sins  of 
the  railroads,  a  denunciation  of  railroads  and  Con- 
gress for  not  having  redressed  these  wrongs,  and 
finally  the  conclusion: 

We,  therefore,  the  producers  of  the  state  in  our 
several  counties  assembled  ...  do  solemnly  declare 


34  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

that  we  will  use  all  lawful  and  peaceable  means  to  free 
ourselves  from  the  tyranny  of  monopoly,  and  that  we 
will  never  cease  our  efforts  for  reform  until  every  de- 
partment of  our  Government  gives  token  that  the 
reign  of  licentious  extravagance  is  over,  and  something 
of  the  purity,  honesty,  and  frugality  with  which  our 
fathers  inaugurated  it,  has  taken  its  place. 

That  to  this  end  we  hereby  declare  ourselves  abso- 
lutely free  and  independent  of  all  past  political  connec- 
tions, and  that  we  will  give  our  suffrage  only  to  such 
men  for  office,  as  we  have  good  reason  to  believe  will 
use  their  best  endeavors  to  the  promotion  of  these  ends; 
and  for  the  support  of  this  declaration,  with  a  firm  reli- 
ance on  divine  Providence,  we  mutually  pledge  to  each 
other  our  lives,  our  fortunes,  and  our  sacred  honor. 

This  fall  campaign  of  1873  in  Illinois  broke  up 
old  party  lines  in  remarkable  fashion.  In  some 
counties  the  Republicans  and  in  other  counties  the 
Democrats  either  openly  joined  the  "Reformers" 
or  refrained  from  making  separate  nominations. 
Of  the  sixty-six  counties  which  the  new  party  con- 
tested, it  was  victorious  in  fifty-three.  This  first 
election  resulted  in  the  best  showing  which  the  Re- 
formers made  in  Illinois.  In  state  elections,  the 
new  party  was  less  successful;  the  farmers  who 
voted  for  their  neighbors  running  on  an  Anti- 
Monopoly  ticket  for  lesser  offices  hesitated  to  vote 
for  strangers  for  state  office. 


GRANGER  MOVEMENT  AT  FLOOD  TIDE  35 

Other  Middle  Western  States  at  this  time  also 
felt  the  uneasy  stirring  of  radical  political  thought 
and  saw  the  birth  of  third  parties,  short-lived,  most 
of  them,  but  throughout  their  brief  existence  cry- 
ing loudly  and  persistently  for  reforms  of  all  de- 
scription. The  tariff,  the  civil  service  system,  and 
the  currency,  all  came  in  for  their  share  of  criticism 
and  of  suggestions  for  revision,  but  the  dominant 
note  was  a  strident  demand  for  railroad  regulation. 
Heirs  of  the  Liberal  Republicans  and  precursors  of 
the  Greenbackers  and  Populists,  these  independent 
parties  were  as  voices  crying  in  the  wilderness,  pre- 
paring the  way  for  national  parties  of  reform.  The 
notable  achievement  of  the  independent  parties  in 
the  domain  of  legislation  was  the  enactment  of 
laws  to  regulate  railroads  in  five  States  of  the  upper 
Mississippi  Valley. x  When  these  laws  were  passed, 
the  parties  had  done  their  work.  By  1876  they 
had  disappeared  or,  hi  a  few  instances,  had  merged 
with  the  Greenbackers.  Their  temporary  suc- 
cesses had  demonstrated,  however,  to  both  farmers 
and  professional  politicians  that  if  once  solidarity 
could  be  obtained  among  the  agricultural  class,  that 
class  would  become  the  controlling  element  in  the 
politics  of  the  Middle  Western  States.  It  is  not 

'See  Chapter  IV. 


36  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

surprising,  therefore,  that  wave  after  wave  of  re- 
form swept  over  the  West  in  the  succeeding  decades. 

The  independent  parties  of  the  middle  seventies 
were  distinctly  spontaneous  uprisings  of  the  people 
and  especially  of  the  farmers,  rather  than  move- 
ments instigated  by  politicians  for  personal  ends  or 
by  professional  reformers.  This  circumstance  was 
a  source  both  of  strength  and  weakness.  As  the 
movements  began  to  develop  unexpected  power, 
politicians  often  attempted  to  take  control  but, 
where  they  succeeded,  the  movement  was  checked 
by  the  farmers'  distrust  of  these  self-appointed 
leaders.  On  the  other  hand,  the  new  parties  suf- 
fered from  the  lack  of  skillful  and  experienced 
leaders.  The  men  who  managed  their  campaigns 
and  headed  their  tickets  were  usually  well-to-do 
farmers  drafted  from  the  ranks,  with  no  more  po- 
litical experience  than  perhaps  a  term  or  two  in 
the  state  legislature.  Such  were  Willard  C.  Flagg, 
president  of  the  Illinois  State  Farmers'  Associa- 
tion, Jacob  G.  Vale,  candidate  for  governor  in  Iowa, 
and  William  R.  Taylor,  the  Granger  governor  of 
Wisconsin. 

Taylor  is  typical  of  the  picturesque  and  force- 
ful figures  which  frontier  life  so  often  developed. 
He  was  born  in  Connecticut,  of  parents  recently 


GRANGER  MOVEMENT  AT  FLOOD  TIDE   37 

emigrated  from  Scotland.  Three  weeks  after  his 
birth  his  mother  died,  and  six  years  later  his  father, 
a  sea  captain,  was  drowned.  The  orphan  boy, 
brought  up  by  strangers  in  Jefferson  County,  New 
York,  experienced  the  hardships  of  frontier  life  and 
developed  that  passion  for  knowledge  which  so  fre- 
quently is  found  in  those  to  whom  education  is 
denied.  When  he  was  sixteen,  he  had  enough  of 
the  rudiments  to  take  charge  of  a  country  school, 
and  by  teaching  in  the  winter  and  working  in  the 
summer  he  earned  enough  to  enter  Union  College. 
He  was  unable  to  complete  the  course,  however, 
and  turned  to  teaching  in  Ohio,  where  he  restored 
to  decent  order  a  school  notorious  for  bullying 
its  luckless  teachers.  But  teaching  was  not  to  be 
his  career;  indeed,  Taylor's  versatility  for  a  time 
threatened  to  make  him  the  proverbial  Jack-of -all- 
trades:  he  was  employed  successively  in  a  grist  mill, 
a  saw  mill,  and  an  iron  foundry;  he  dabbled  in  the 
study  of  medicine;  and  finally,  in  the  year  which 
saw  Wisconsin  admitted  to  the  Union,  he  bought  a 
farm  in  that  State.  Ownership  of  property  steadied 
his  interests  and  at  the  same  time  afforded  an  ade- 
quate outlet  for  his  energies.  He  soon  made  his 
farm  a  model  for  the  neighborhood  and  managed  it 
so  efficiently  that  he  had  time  to  interest  himself 


38  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

in  farmers'  organizations  and  to  hold  positions  of 
trust  in  his  township  and  county. 

By  1873  Taylor  had  acquired  considerable  local 
political  experience  and  had  even  held  a  seat  in  the 
state  senate.  As  president  of  the  State  Agricultural 
Society,  he  was  quite  naturally  chosen  to  head  the 
ticket  of  the  new  Liberal  Reform  party.  The  brew- 
ing interests  of  the  State,  angered  at  a  drastic  tem- 
perance law  enacted  by  the  preceding  legislature, 
swung  their  support  to  Taylor.  Thus  reenf orced,  he 
won  the  election.  As  governor  he  made  vigorous 
and  tireless  attempts  to  enforce  the  Granger  rail- 
road laws,  and  on  one  occasion  he  scandalized  the 
conventional  citizens  of  the  State  by  celebrating 
a  favorable  court  decision  in  one  of  the  Granger 
cases  with  a  salvo  of  artillery  from  the  capitol. 

Yet  in  spite  of  this  prominence,  Taylor,  after  his 
defeat  for  reelection  in  1875,  retired  to  his  farm  and 
to  obscurity.  His  vivid  personality  was  not  again 
to  assert  itself  in  public  affairs.  It  is  difficult  to 
account  for  the  fact  that  so  few  of  the  farmers  dur- 
ing the  Granger  period  played  prominent  parts  in 
later  phases  of  the  agrarian  crusade.  The  rank 
and  file  of  the  successive  parties  must  have  been 
much  the  same,  but  each  wave  of  the  movement 
swept  new  leaders  to  the  surface. 


GRANGER  MOVEMENT  AT  FLOOD  TIDE  39 

The  one  outstanding  exception  among  the  leaders 
of  the  Anti-Monopolists  was  Ignatius  Donnelly  of 
Minnesota  —  "the  sage  of  Nininger"  —  who  re- 
mained a  captain  of  the  radical  cohorts  in  every 
agrarian  movement  until  his  death  in  1 90 1 .  A  red- 
headed aggressive  Irishman,  with  a  magnetic  per- 
sonality and  a  remarkable  intellect,  Donnelly  went 
to  Minnesota  from  Pennsylvania  in  1856  and  spec- 
ulated in  town  sites  on  a  large  scale.  When  he  was 
left  stranded  by  the  panic  of  1857,  acting  upon  his 
own  principle  that  "to  hide  one's  light  under  a 
bushel  is  to  extinguish  it, "  he  entered  the  political 
arena.  In  Pennsylvania  Donnelly  had  been  a 
Democrat,  but  his  genuine  sympathy  for  the  op- 
pressed made  him  an  opponent  of  slavery  and  con- 
sequently a  Republican.  In  1857  and  1858  he  ran 
for  the  state  senate  in  Minnesota  on  the  Republi- 
can ticket  in  a  hopelessly  Democratic  county.  In 
1859  he  was  nominated  for  lieutenant  governor  on 
the  ticket  headed  by  Alexander  Ramsey;  and  his 
caustic  wit,  his  keenness  in  debate,  and  his  elo- 
quence made  him  a  valuable  asset  in  the  battle- 
royal  between  Republicans  and  Democrats  for  the 
possession  of  Minnesota.  As  lieutenant  governor, 
Donnelly  early  showed  his  sympathy  with  the 
farmers  by  championing  laws  which  lowered  the 


40  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

legal  rate  of  interest  and  which  made  more  humane 
the  process  of  foreclosure  on  mortgages.  The  out- 
break of  the  Civil  War  gave  him  an  opportunity  to 
demonstrate  his  executive  ability  as  acting  gover- 
nor during  Ramsey's  frequent  trips  to  Washington. 
In  this  capacity  he  issued  the  first  proclamation  for 
the  raising  of  Minnesota  troops  in  response  to  the 
call  of  President  Lincoln.  Elected  to  Congress  in 
1862,  he  served  three  terms  and  usually  supported 
progressive  legislation. 

Donnelly's  growing  popularity  and  his  ambition 
for  promotion  to  the  Senate  soon  became  a  mat- 
ter of  alarm  to  the  friends  of  Senator  Ramsey, 
who  controlled  the  Republican  party  in  the  State. 
They  determined  to  prevent  Donnelly's  renomi- 
nation  in  1868  and  selected  William  D.  Washburn 
of  Minneapolis  to  make  the  race  against  him.  In 
the  spring  of  this  year  Donnelly  engaged  in  a  con- 
troversy with  Representative  E.  B.  Washburn  of 
Illinois,  a  brother  of  W.  D.  Washburn,  in  the 
course  of  which  the  Illinois  congressman  published 
a  letter  in  a  St.  Paul  paper  attacking  Donnelly's 
personal  character.  Beh'eving  this  to  be  part  of  the 
campaign  against  him,  the  choleric  Minnesotan  re- 
plied in  the  house  with  a  remarkable  rhetorical 
display  which  greatly  entertained  the  members  but 


IGNA  TI  US  DON  NELL  }' 
Drawing  from  a  photograph. 


legal  rate  of  ii 
the  proc 
break  of  the  < 
demons* 
nor « 

Inthiscapaci 
the  r 


\  v  \  Hyuofad  his  ambition 
4B4^i$griata|0&aihecame  &  mat- 
ter of  alarm  to  the  friends  of  Senator  Ramsey, 
who  controlled  the  Republican  party  in  the  State. 
They  determined  to  prevent  Do?) 
nation  in  1868  and  selt  in  D.  Washburn 

of  Minneapolis  to  mat  In 

tjie  spri  i  a  con- 

troversy sentat'  a  of 

Illinois,  a  bro:  the 

course  of  which  the  Illinois  COB  '.hihed 

a  letter  in  ul  papt  i]y*s 

personal  character.    B «  '  o  be  part  of  the 

campaign  against  him,  aesotan  re- 

plied in  the  house  with  a  remarkable  rhetorical 
display  which  greatly  entertained  the  members  but 


Andersen-Lamb,  En  H.Y. 


GRANGER  MOVEMENT  AT  FLOOD  TIDE   41 

did  not  increase  their  respect  for  him.  His  oppo- 
nents at  home  made  effective  use  of  this  affair,  and 
the  outcome  of  the  contest  was  a  divided  conven- 
tion, the  nomination  of  two  Republicans,  each 
claiming  to  be  the  regular  candidate  of  the  party, 
and  the  ultimate  election  of  a  Democrat. 

Donnelly  was  soon  ready  to  break  with  the  old 
guard  of  the  Republican  party  in  national  as  well 
as  in  state  politics.  In  1870  he  ran  for  Congress  as 
an  independent  Republican  on  a  low  tariff  plat- 
form but  was  defeated  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he 
received  the  endorsement  of  the  Democratic  con- 
vention. Two  years  later  he  joined  the  Liberal 
Republicans  in  supporting  Greeley  against  Grant. 
When  the  farmers'  Granges  began  to  spring  up  like 
mushrooms  in  1873,  Donnelly  was  quick  to  see  the 
political  possibilities  of  the  movement.  He  con- 
ducted an  extensive  correspondence  with  farm- 
ers, editors,  and  politicians  of  radical  tendencies 
all  over  the  State  and  played  a  leading  part  in  the 
organization  of  the  Anti-Monopoly  party.  He  was 
elected  to  the  state  senate  in  1873,  and  in  the  fol- 
lowing year  he  started  a  newspaper,  the  Anti- 
Monopolist,  to  serve  as  the  organ  of  the  movement. 

Although  Donnelly  was  technically  still  a  farmer, 
he  was  quite  content  to  leave  the  management  of  his 


42  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

farm  to  his  capable  wife,  while  he  made  politics  his 
profession,  with  literature  and  lecturing  as  avoca- 
tions. His  frequent  and  brilliant  lectures  no  less 
than  his  voluminous  writings1  attest  his  amazing 
industry.  Democrat,  Republican,  Liberal-Repub- 
lican, and  Anti-Monopolist;  speculator,  lawyer, 
farmer,  lecturer,  stump-speaker,  editor,  and  author; 
preacher  of  morals  and  practicer  of  shrewd  political 
evasions;  and  always  a  radical  —  he  was  for  many 
years  a  force  to  be  reckoned  with  in  the  politics  of 
his  State  and  of  the  nation. 

1  The  Great  Cryptogram,  for  instance,  devotes  a  thousand  pages  to 
proving  a  Bacon  cipher  in  the  plays  of  Shakespeare! 


CHAPTER  IV 

CUBBING   THE   RAILROADS 

THOUGH  the  society  of  the  Patrons  of  Husbandry 
was  avowedly  non-political  in  character,  there  is 
ample  justification  for  the  use  of  the  term  "Grang- 
er" in  connection  with  the  radical  railroad  legisla- 
tion enacted  in  the  Northwestern  States  during  the 
seventies.  The  fact  that  the  Grange  did  not  take 
direct  political  action  is  immaterial:  certainly  the 
order  made  political  action  on  the  part  of  the 
farmers  possible  by  establishing  among  them  a  feel- 
ing of  mutual  confidence  and  trust  whereby  they 
could  organize  to  work  harmoniously  for  their  com- 
mon cause.  Before  the  advent  of  the  Patrons  of 
Husbandry  the  farmers  were  so  isolated  from  each 
other  that  cooperation  was  impossible.  It  is  hard 
for  us  to  imagine,  familiar  as  we  are  with  the  rural 
free  delivery  of  mail,  with  the  country  telephone 
line,  with  the  automobile,  how  completely  the  aver- 
age farmer  of  1865  was  cut  off  from  communication 

43 


44  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

with  the  outside  world.  His  dissociation  from  any 
but  his  nearest  neighbors  made  him  unsocial,  nar- 
row-minded, bigoted,  and  suspicious.  He  believed 
that  every  man's  hand  was  against  him,  and  he  was 
therefore  often  led  to  turn  his  hand  against  every 
man.  Not  until  he  was  convinced  that  he  might 
at  least  trust  the  Grangers  did  he  lay  aside  his 
suspicions  and  join  with  other  farmers  in  the  at- 
tempt to  obtain  what  they  considered  just  railroad 
legislation. 

Certain  it  is,  moreover,  that  the  Grangers  made 
use  of  the  popular  hostility  to  the  railroads  in  secur- 
ing membership  for  the  order.  "Cooperation" 
and  "Down  with  Monopoly"  were  two  of  the  slo- 
gans most  commonly  used  by  the  Grange  between 
1870  and  1875  and  were  in  large  part  responsi- 
ble for  its  great  expansion.  Widely  circulated  re- 
prints of  articles  exposing  graft  and  corruption 
made  excellent  fuel  for  the  flames  of  agitation. 

How  much  of  the  farmers'  bitterness  against  the 
railroads  was  justified  it  is  difficult  to  determine. 
Some  of  it  was  undoubtedly  due  to  prejudice,  to 
the  hostility  of  the  "producer"  for  the  "nonpro- 
ducer,"  and  to  the  suspicion  which  the  Western 
farmer  felt  for  the  Eastern  magnate.  But  much 
of  the  suspicion  was  not  without  foundation.  In 


CURBING  THE  RAILROADS  45 

some  cases  manipulation  of  railway  stock  had  ab- 
solutely cheated  farmers  and  agricultural  towns 
and  counties  out  of  their  investments.  It  is  a  well- 
known  fact  that  the  corporations  were  not  averse 
to  creating  among  legislators  a  disposition  to  favor 
their  interests.  Passes  were  commonly  given  by 
the  railroads  to  all  public  officials,  from  the  local 
supervisors  to  the  judges  of  the  Supreme  Court, 
and  opportunities  were  offered  to  legislators  to  buy 
stock  far  below  the  market  price.  In  such  subtle 
ways  the  railroads  insinuated  themselves  into  favor 
among  the  makers  and  interpreters  of  law.  Then, 
too,  the  farmers  felt  that  the  railway  companies 
made  rates  unnecessarily  high  and  frequently 
practised  unfair  discrimination  against  certain  sec- 
tions and  individuals.  When  the  Iowa  farmer  was 
obliged  to  burn  corn  for  fuel,  because  at  fifteen  cents 
a  bushel  it  was  cheaper  than  coal,  though  at  the 
same  time  it  was  selling  for  a  dollar  in  the  East,  he 
felt  that  there  was  something  wrong,  and  quite 
naturally  accused  the  railroads  of  extortion. 

The  fundamental  issue  involved  in  Illinois, 
Minnesota,  Iowa,  and  Wisconsin,  where  the  battle 
was  begun  and  fought  to  a  finish,  was  whether  or 
not  a  State  had  power  to  regulate  the  tariffs  of 
railway  companies  incorporated  under  its  laws. 


46  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

Railway  companies,  many  jurists  argued,  were  pri- 
vate concerns  transacting  business  according  to  the 
laws  of  the  State  and  no  more  to  be  controlled  in 
making  rates  than  dry  goods  companies  in  fixing 
the  price  of  spools  of  thread;  rates,  like  the  price  of 
merchandise,  were  determined  by  the  volume  of 
trade  and  the  amount  of  competition,  and  for  a 
State  to  interfere  with  them  was  nothing  less  than 
tyranny.  On  the  other  hand,  those  who  advocated 
regulation  argued  that  railroads,  though  private 
corporations,  were  from  the  nature  of  their  busi- 
ness public  servants  and,  as  such,  should  be  subject 
to  state  regulation  and  control. 

Some  States,  foreseeing  difficulties  which  might 
arise  later  from  the  doctrine  that  a  charter  is  a  con- 
tract, as  set  forth  by  the  United  States  Supreme 
Court  in  the  famous  Dartmouth  College  case, r  had 
quite  early  in  their  history  attempted  to  safeguard 
their  right  to  legislate  concerning  corporations.  A 
clause  had  been  inserted  in  the  state  constitution 
of  Wisconsin  which  declared  that  all  laws  creating 
corporations  might  at  any  time  be  altered  or  re- 
pealed by  the  legislatures.  The  constitution  of 
Minnesota  asserted  specifically  that  the  railroads, 

1  See  John  Marshall  and  the  Constitution,  by  Edward  S.  Corwin  (in 
The  Chronicles  of  America),  p.  154  ff. 


CURBING  THE  RAILROADS  47 

as  common  carriers  enjoying  right  of  way,  were 
bound  to  carry  freight  on  equal  and  reasonable 
terms.  When  the  Legislature  of  Iowa  turned  over 
to  the  railroad  companies  lands  granted  by  the 
Federal  Government,  it  did  so  with  the  reservation 
that  the  companies  should  be  subject  to  the  rules 
and  regulations  of  the  General  Assembly.  Thus 
these  States  were  fortified  not  only  by  arguments 
from  general  governmental  theory  but  also  by 
written  articles,  more  or  less  specifically  phrased, 
on  which  they  relied  to  establish  their  right  to 
control  the  railroads. 

The  first  gun  in  this  fight  for  railroad  regulation 
was  fired  in  Illinois.  As  early  as  1869,  after  several 
years  of  agitation,  the  legislature  passed  an  act  de- 
claring that  railroads  should  be  limited  to  "just, 
reasonable,  and  uniform  rates, "  but,  as  no  provi- 
sion was  made  for  determining  what  such  rates 
were,  the  act  was  a  mere  encumbrance  on  the 
statute  books.  In  the  new  state  constitution  of 
1870,  however,  the  framers,  influenced  by  a  grow- 
ing demand  on  the  part  of  the  farmers  which  mani- 
fested itself  in  a  Producers'  Convention,  inserted  a 
section  directing  the  legislature  to  "pass  laws  to 
correct  abuses  and  to  prevent  unjust  discrimina- 
tion and  extortion  in  the  rates  of  freight  and 


48  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

passenger  tariffs  on  the  different  railroads  in  this 
State."  The  legislature  at  its  next  session  appears 
to  have  made  an  honest  attempt  to  obey  these  in- 
structions. One  act  established  maximum  passen- 
ger fares  varying  from  two  and  one-half  to  five  and 
one-half  cents  a  mile  for  the  different  classes  into 
which  the  roads  were  divided.  Another  provided, 
in  effect,  that  freight  charges  should  be  based  en- 
tirely upon  distance  traversed  and  prohibited  any 
increases  over  rates  in  1870.  This  amounted  to  an 
attempt  to  force  all  rates  to  the  level  of  the  lowest 
competitive  rates  of  that  year.  Finally,  a  third 
act  established  a  board  of  railroad  and  warehouse 
commissioners  charged  with  the  enforcement  of 
these  and  other  laws  and  with  the  collection  of 
information. 

The  railroad  companies,  denying  the  right  of  the 
State  to  regulate  their  business,  flatly  refused  to 
obey  the  laws;  and  the  state  supreme  court  de- 
clared the  act  regulating  freight  rates  unconstitu- 
tional on  the  ground  that  it  attempted  to  prevent 
not  only  unjust  discrimination  but  any  discrimi- 
nation at  all.  The  legislature  then  passed  the  Act 
of  1873,  which  avoided  the  constitutional  pitfall 
by  providing  that  discriminatory  rates  should  be 
considered  as  prima facie  but  not  absolute  evidence 


CURBING  THE  RAILROADS  49 

of  unjust  discrimination.  The  railroads  were  thus 
permitted  to  adduce  evidence  to  show  that  the  dis- 
crimination was  justified,  but  the  act  expressly 
stated  that  the  existence  of  competition  at  some 
points  and  its  nonexistence  at  others  should  not  be 
deemed  a  sufficient  justification  of  discrimination. 
In  order  to  prevent  the  roads  from  raising  all  rates 
to  the  level  of  the  highest  instead  of  lowering  them 
to  the  level  of  the  lowest,  the  commissioners  were 
directed  to  establish  a  schedule  of  maximum  rates; 
and  the  charging  of  rates  higher  than  these  by  any 
company  after  January  15,  1874,  was  to  be  con- 
sidered prima  facie  evidence  of  extortion.  Other 
provisions  increased  the  penalties  for  violations 
and  strengthened  the  enforcing  powers  of  the  com- 
mission in  other  ways.  This  act  was  roundly  de- 
nounced at  the  time,  especially  in  the  East,  as  an 
attempt  at  confiscation,  and  the  railroad  companies 
refused  to  obey  it  for  several  years;  but  ultimately 
it  stood  the  test  of  the  courts  and  became  the  per- 
manent basis  of  railroad  regulation  in  Illinois  and 
the  model  for  the  solution  of  this  problem  in  many 
other  States. 

The  first  Granger  law  of  Minnesota,  enacted  in 
1871,  established  fixed  schedules  for  both  passen- 
gers and  freight,  while  another  act  of  the  same  year 


50  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

provided  for  a  railroad  commissioner.  In  this 
instance  also  the  companies  denied  the  validity  of 
the  law,  and  when  the  state  supreme  court  upheld  it 
in  1873,  they  appealed  to  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States.  In  the  meantime  there  was  no 
way  of  enforcing  the  law,  and  the  antagonism  to- 
ward the  roads  fostered  by  the  Grange  and  the 
Anti-Monopoly  party  became  more  and  more  in- 
tense. In  1874  the  legislature  replaced  the  Act  of 
1871  with  one  modeled  on  the  Illinois  law  of  1873; 
but  it  soon  discovered  that  no  workable  set  of  uni- 
form rates  could  be  made  for  the  State  because  of 
the  wide  variation  of  conditions  in  the  different 
sections.  Rates  and  fares  which  would  be  just  to 
the  companies  in  the  frontier  regions  of  the  State 
would  be  extortionate  in  the  thickly  populated 
areas.  This  difficulty  could  have  been  avoided  by 
giving  the  commission  power  to  establish  varying 
schedules  for  different  sections  of  the  same  road; 
but  the  anti-railroad  sentiment  was  beginning  to 
die  down,  and  the  Legislature  of  1875,  instead  of 
trying  to  improve  the  law,  abandoned  the  attempt 
at  state  regulation. 

The  Granger  laws  of  Iowa  and  Wisconsin,  both 
enacted  in  1874,  attempted  to  establish  maxi- 
mum rates  by  direct  legislative  action,  although 


CURBING  THE  RAILROADS  51 

commissions  were  also  created  to  collect  informa- 
tion and  assist  in  enforcing  the  laws.  The  Iowa  law 
was  very  carefully  drawn  and  appears  to  have  been 
observed,  in  form  at  least,  by  most  of  the  com- 
panies while  it  remained  in  force.  In  1878,  how- 
ever, a  systematic  campaign  on  the  part  of  the  rail- 
road forces  resulted  in  the  repeal  of  the  act.  In 
Wisconsin,  a  majority  of  the  members  of  the  Senate 
favored  the  railroads  and,  fearing  to  show  their 
hands,  attempted  to  defeat  the  proposed  legisla- 
tion by  substituting  the  extremely  radical  Potter 
Bill  for  the  moderate  measure  adopted  by  the 
Assembly.  The  senators  found  themselves  hoist 
with  their  own  petard,  however,  for  the  lower 
house,  made  up  largely  of  Grangers,  accepted  this 
bill  rather  than  let  the  matter  of  railroad  legisla- 
tion go  by  default.  The  rates  fixed  by  the  Potter 
Law  for  many  commodities  were  certainly  un- 
reasonably low,  although  the  assertion  of  a  rail- 
road official  that  the  enforcement  of  the  law  would 
cut  off  twenty-five  per  cent  of  the  gross  earnings  of 
the  companies  was  a  decided  exaggeration.  Rely- 
ing upon  the  advice  of  such  eminent  Eastern  lawyers 
as  William  M.  Evarts,  Charles  O'Conor,  E.  Rock- 
wood  Hoar,  and  Benjamin  R.  Curtis  that  the  law 
was  invalid,  the  roads  refused  to  obey  it  until  it  was 


OF  ILLINOIS 


52  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

upheld  by  the  state  supreme  court  late  in  1874. 
They  then  began  a  campaign  for  its  repeal.  Though 
they  obtained  only  some  modification  in  1875,  they 
succeeded  completely  in  1876. 

The  contest  between  the  railroads  and  the  farm- 
ers was  intense  while  it  lasted.  The  farmers  had 
votes;  the  railroads  had  money;  and  the  legislators 
were  sometimes  between  the  devil  and  the  deep  sea 
in  the  fear  of  offending  one  side  or  the  other.  The 
farmers'  methods  of  campaign  were  simple.  Often 
questionnaires  were  distributed  to  all  candidates  for 
office,  and  only  those  who  went  on  record  as  favor- 
ing railroad  restriction  were  endorsed  by  the  farm- 
ers' clubs  and  committees.  An  agricultural  con- 
vention, sometimes  even  a  meeting  of  the  state 
Grange,  would  be  held  at  the  capital  of  the  State 
while  the  legislature  was  in  session,  and  it  was  a 
bold  legislator  who,  in  the  presence  of  his  farmer 
constituents,  would  vote  against  the  measures  they 
approved.  When  the  railroads  in  Illinois  refused 
to  lower  their  passenger  rates  to  conform  to  the  law, 
adventurous  farmers  often  attempted  to  "ride  for 
legal  fares,"  giving  the  trainmen  the  alternative 
of  accepting  the  low  fares  or  throwing  the  hardy 
passengers  from  the  train. 

The  methods  of  the  railroads  in  dealing  with  the 


CURBING  THE  RAILROADS  53 

legislators  were  most  subtle.  Whether  or  not  the 
numerous  charges  of  bribery  were  true,  railroad 
favors  were  undoubtedly  distributed  among  well 
disposed  legislators.  In  Iowa  passes  were  not  given 
to  the  senators  who  voted  against  the  railroads,  and 
those  sent  to  the  men  who  voted  in  the  railroads* 
interest  were  accompanied  by  notes  announcing 
that  free  passes  were  no  longer  to  be  given  gener- 
ally but  only  to  the  friends  of  the  railroads.  At 
the  session  of  the  Iowa  Legislature  in  1872,  four 
lawyers  who  posed  as  farmers  and  Grange  members 
were  well  known  as  lobbyists  for  the  railroads.  The 
senate  paid  its  respects  to  these  men  at  the  close  of 
its  session  by  adopting  the  folio  wing  resolution: 

WHEREAS,  There  have  been  constantly  in  attendance 
on  the  Senate  and  House  of  this  General  Assembly, 
from  the  commencement  of  the  session  to  the  present 
time,  four  gentlemen  professing  to  represent  the  great 
agricultural  interest  of  the  State  of  Iowa,  known  as  the 
Grange;  and  — 

WHEREAS,  These  gentlemen  appear  entirely  destitute 
of  any  visible  means  of  support;  therefore  be  it  — 

RESOLVED,  By  the  Senate,  the  House  concurring, 
that  the  janitors  permit  aforesaid  gentlemen  to  gather 
up  all  the  waste  paper,  old  newspapers,  &c.,  from  under 
the  desks  of  the  members,  and  they  be  allowed  one 
postage  stamp  each,  The  American  Agriculturist,  What 
Greeley  Knows  about  Farming,  and  that  they  be  per- 


54  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

milled  lo  lake  wilh  Ihem  lo  Iheir  homes,  if  Ihey  have 
any,  all  Ihe  rejected  railroad  lariff  bills,  Beardsley's 
speech  on  female  suffrage,  Claussen's  reply,  Kasson's 
speech  on  barnacles,  Blakeley's  dog  bill,  Teale's  liquor 
bill,  and  be  given  a  pass  over  Ihe  Des  Moines  Valley 
Railroad,  wilh  Ihe  earnesl  hope  lhal  Ihey  will  never 
relurn  lo  Des  Moines. 

Once  the  Granger  laws  were  enacted,  the  rail- 
roads either  fought  the  laws  in  court  or  obeyed 
them  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  them  appear  most 
obnoxious  to  the  people,  or  else  they  employed  both 
tactics.  The  lawsuits,  which  began  as  soon  as  the 
laws  had  been  passed,  dragged  on,  in  appeal  after 
appeal,  until  finally  they  were  settled  in  the  Su- 
preme Court  of  the  United  States.  These  suits 
were  not  so  numerous  as  might  be  expected,  because 
in  most  of  the  States  they  had  to  be  brought  on  the 
initiative  of  the  injured  shipper,  and  many  shippers 
feared  to  incur  the  animosity  of  the  railroad.  A 
farmer  was  afraid  that,  if  he  angered  the  railroad, 
misfortunes  would  befall  him:  his  grain  might  be 
delivered  to  the  wrong  elevators  or  left  to  stand  and 
spoil  in  damp  freight  cars;  there  might  be  no  cars 
available  for  grain  just  when  his  shipment  was 
ready;  and  machinery  destined  for  him  might  be 
delayed  at  a  time  when  lack  of  it  would  mean  the 
loss  of  his  crops.  The  railroads  for  their  part 


CURBING  THE  RAILROADS  55 

whenever  they  found  an  opportunity  to  make  the 
new  laws  appear  obnoxious  in  the  eyes  of  the  people, 
were  not  slow  to  seize  it.  That  section  of  the  Illi- 
nois law  of  1873  which  prohibited  unjust  discrimi- 
nation went  into  effect  in  July,  but  the  maximum 
freight  rates  were  not  fixed  until  January  of  1874. 
As  a  result  of  this  situation,  the  railroads  in  July 
made  all  their  freight  rates  uniform,  according  to 
the  law,  but  accomplished  this  uniformity  by  rais- 
ing the  low  rates  instead  of  lowering  the  high.  In 
Minnesota,  similarly,  the  St.  Paul  and  Pacific  road, 
in  its  zeal  to  establish  uniform  passenger  rates, 
raised  the  fare  between  St.  Paul  and  Minneapolis 
from  three  to  five  cents  a  mile,  in  order  to  make  it 
conform  to  the  rates  elsewhere  in  the  State.  The 
St.  Paul  and  Sioux  City  road  declared  that  the 
Granger  law  made  its  operation  unprofitable,  and 
it  so  reduced  its  train  service  that  the  people  peti- 
tioned the  commission  to  restore  the  former  rate. 
In  Wisconsin,  when  the  state  supreme  court  af- 
firmed the  constitutionality  of  the  radical  Potter 
law,  the  railroads  retaliated  in  some  cases  by  carry- 
ing out  their  threat  to  give  the  public  "Potter  cars, 
Potter  rails,  and  Potter  time."  As  a  result  the 
public  soon  demanded  the  repeal  of  the  law. 
In  all  the  States  but  Illinois  the  Granger  laws  were 


56  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

repealed  before  they  had  been  given  a  fair  trial. 
The  commissions  remained  in  existence,  however, 
although  with  merely  advisory  functions;  and  they 
sometimes  did  good  service  in  the  arbitration  of  dis- 
putes between  shippers  and  railroads.  Interest  in 
the  railroad  problem  died  down  for  the  time,  but 
everyone  of  the  Granger  States  subsequently  enact- 
ed for  the  regulation  of  railroad  rates  statutes  which, 
although  more  scientific  than  the  laws  of  the  seven- 
ties, are  the  same  in  principle.  The  Granger  laws 
thus  paved  the  way  not  only  for  future  and  more  en- 
during legislation  in  these  States  but  also  for  similar 
legislation  in  most  of  the  other  States  of  the  Union 
and  even  for  the  national  regulation  of  railroads 
through  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission. 

The  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  was  the 
theater  for  the  final  stage  of  this  conflict  between 
the  railroads  and  the  farmers.  In  October,  1876, 
decisions  were  handed  down  together  in  eight  cases 
which  had  been  appealed  from  federal  circuit  and 
state  courts  in  Illinois,  Wisconsin,  Iowa,  and  Min- 
nesota, and  which  involved  the  validity  of  the 
Granger  laws.  The  fundamental  issue  was  the 
same  in  all  these  cases  —  the  right  of  a  State  to 
regulate  a  business  that  is  public  in  nature  though 
privately  owned  and  managed. 


CURBING  THE  RAILROADS  57 

The  first  of  the  "Granger  cases,"  as  they  were 
termed  by  Justice  Field  in  a  dissenting  opinion,  was 
not  a  railroad  case  primarily  but  grew  out  of  ware- 
house legislation  which  the  farmers  of  Illinois  se- 
cured in  1871.  This  act  established  maximum 
charges  for  grain  storage  and  required  all  ware- 
housemen to  publish  their  rates  for  each  year  dur- 
ing the  first  week  in  January  and  to  refrain  from 
increasing  these  rates  during  the  year  and  from  dis- 
criminating between  customers.  In  an  endeavor 
to  enforce  this  law  the  railroad  and  warehouse 
commission  brought  suit  against  Munn  and  Scott,  a 
warehouse  firm  in  Chicago,  for  failure  to  take  out 
the  license  required  by  the  act.  The  suit,  known 
as  Munn  vs.  Illinois,  finally  came  to  the  United 
States  Supreme  Court  and  was  decided  in  favor  of 
the  State,  two  of  the  justices  dissenting.1  The 
opinion  of  the  court  in  this  case,  delivered  by  Chief 
Justice  Waite,  laid  down  the  principles  which  were 
followed  in  the  railroad  cases.  The  attorneys  for 
the  warehousemen  had  argued  that  the  act  in  ques- 
tion, by  assuming  to  limit  charges,  amounted  to  a 
deprivation  of  property  without  due  process  of  law 
and  was  thus  repugnant  to  the  Fourteenth  Amend- 
ment to  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 

1 94  United  States  Reports,  113. 


58  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

But  the  court  declared  that  it  had  long  been  cus- 
tomary both  in  England  and  America  to  regulate 
by  law  any  business  in  which  the  public  has  an  in- 
terest, such  as  ferries,  common  carriers,  bakers,  or 
millers,  and  that  the  warehouse  business  in  ques- 
tion was  undoubtedly  clothed  with  such  a  public 
interest.  Further,  it  was  asserted  that  this  right 
to  regulate  implied  the  right  to  fix  maximum 
charges,  and  that  what  those  charges  should  be  was 
a  legislative  and  not  a  judicial  question. 

In  deciding  the  railroad  cases  the  courts  applied 
the  same  general  principles,  the  public  nature  of  the 
railroad  business  having  already  been  established 
by  a  decision  in  1872.  *  Another  point  was  in- 
volved, however,  because  of  the  contention  of  the 
attorneys  for  the  companies  that  the  railway  char- 
ters were  contracts  and  that  the  enforcement  of  the 
laws  would  amount  to  an  impairment  of  contracts, 
which  was  forbidden  by  the  Constitution.  The 
court  admitted  that  the  charters  were  contracts 
but  denied  that  state  regulation  could  be  considered 
an  impairment  of  contracts  unless  the  terms  of  the 
charter  were  specific.  Moreover,  it  was  pointed 
out  that  contracts  must  be  interpreted  in  the  light 
of  rights  reserved  to  the  State  in  its  constitution 

*  Olcott  w.  The  Supervisors,  16  Wallace,  678. 


CURBING  THE  RAILROADS  59 

and  in  the  light  of  its  general  laws  of  incorporation 
under  which  the  charters  were  granted. 

These  court  decisions  established  principles  which 
even  now  are  of  vital  concern  to  business  and  poli- 
tics. From  that  time  to  this  no  one  has  denied  the 
right  of  States  to  fix  maximum  charges  for  any 
business  which  is  public  in  its  nature  or  which  has 
been  clothed  with  a  public  interest;  nor  has  the  in- 
clusion of  the  railroad  and  warehouse  businesses  hi 
that  class  been  questioned.  The  opinion,  however, 
that  this  right  of  the  States  is  unlimited,  and  there- 
fore not  subject  to  judicial  review,  has  been  practi- 
cally reversed.  In  1890  the  Supreme  Court  de- 
clared a  Minnesota  law  invalid  because  it  denied  a 
judicial  hearing  as  to  the  reasonableness  of  rates1; 
and  the  courts  now  assume  it  to  be  their  right  and 
duty  to  determine  whether  or  not  rates  fixed  by 
legislation  are  so  low  as  to  amount  to  a  deprivation 
of  property  without  due  process  of  law.  In  spite 
of  this  later  limitation  upon  the  power  of  the 
States,  the  Granger  decisions  have  furnished  the 
legal  basis  for  state  regulation  of  railroads  down 
to  the  present  day.  They  are  the  most  significant 
achievements  of  the  anti-monopoly  movement  of 
the  seventies. 

1 134  United  States  Reports,  418. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE    COLLAPSE    OF    THE    GRANGER    MOVEMENT 

THE  first  phase  of  the  agrarian  crusade,  which  cen- 
tered around  and  took  its  distinctive  name  from 
the  Grange,  reached  its  high  water  mark  in  1874. 
Early  in  the  next  year  the  tide  began  to  ebb.  The 
number  of  Granges  decreased  rapidly  during  the  re- 
mainder of  the  decade,  and  of  over  twenty  thou- 
sand in  1874  only  about  four  thousand  were  alive 
in  1880. 

Several  causes  contributed  to  this  sudden  decline. 
Any  organization  which  grows  so  rapidly  is  prone 
to  decay  with  equal  rapidity;  the  slower  growths 
are  better  rooted  and  are  more  likely  to  reach  frui- 
tion. So  with  the  Grange.  Many  farmers  had 
joined  the  order,  attracted  by  its  novelty  and  vogue ; 
others  joined  the  organization  in  the  hope  that  it 
would  prove  a  panacea  for  all  the  ills  that  agricul- 
ture is  heir  to  and  then  left  it  in  disgust  when  they 
found  its  success  neither  immediate  nor  universal. 

60 


COLLAPSE  OF  THE  GRANGER  MOVEMENT  61 

Its  methods  of  organization,  too,  while  admirably 
adapted  to  arousing  enthusiasm  and  to  securing 
new  chapters  quickly,  did  not  make  for  stability 
and  permanence.  The  Grange  deputy,  as  the  or- 
ganizer was  termed,  did  not  do  enough  of  what  the 
salesman  calls  "follow-up  work. "  He  went  into  a 
town,  persuaded  an  influential  farmer  to  go  about 
with  him  in  a  house-to-house  canvass,  talked  to  the 
other  farmers  of  the  vicinity,  stirred  them  up  to 
interest  and  excitement,  organized  a  Grange,  and 
then  left  the  town.  If  he  happened  to  choose  the 
right  material,  the  chapter  became  an  active  and 
flourishing  organization; if  he  did  not  choose  wisely, 
it  might  drag  along  in  a  perfunctory  existence  or 
even  lapse  entirely.  Then,  too,  the  deputy's  ig- 
norance of  local  conditions  sometimes  led  him  to 
open  the  door  to  the  farmers'  enemies.  There  can 
be  little  doubt  that  insidious  harm  was  worked 
through  the  admission  into  the  Grange  of  men  who 
were  farmers  only  incidentally  and  whose  "inter- 
est in  agriculture"  was  limited  to  making  profits 
from  the  farmer  rather  than  from  the  farm.  As 
D.  Wyatt  Aiken,  deputy  for  the  Grange  in  the 
Southern  States  and  later  member  of  the  executive 
committee  of  the  National  Grange,  shrewdly  com- 
mented, "Everybody  wanted  to  join  the  Grange 


62  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

then;  lawyers,  to  get  clients;  doctors,  to  get  cus- 
tomers; Shylocks,  to  get  their  pound  of  flesh;  and 
sharpers,  to  catch  the  babes  in  the  woods.' ' 

Not  only  the  members  who  managed  thus  to  in- 
sinuate themselves  into  the  order  but  also  the  le- 
gitimate members  proved  hard  to  control.  With 
that  hostility  to  concentrated  authority  which  so 
often  and  so  lamentably  manifests  itself  in  a  demo- 
cratic body,  the  rank  and  file  looked  with  suspicion 
upon  the  few  men  who  constituted  the  National 
Grange.  The  average  farmer  was  interested  main- 
ly in  local  issues,  conditions,  and  problems,  and 
looked  upon  the  National  Grange  not  as  a  means 
of  helping  him  in  local  affairs,  but  as  a  combination 
of  monopolists  who  had  taken  out  a  patent  on 
the  local  grange  and  forced  him  to  pay  a  royalty 
in  order  to  enjoy  its  privileges.  The  demand  for 
reduction  in  the  power  of  the  National  Grange  led 
to  frequent  attempts  to  revise  the  constitution  in 
the  direction  of  decentralization;  and  the  revisions 
were  such  as  merely  to  impair  the  power  of  the  Na- 
tional Grange  without  satisfying  the  discontented 
members. 

Of  all  the  causes  of  the  rapid  collapse  of  the 
Granger  movement,  the  unfortunate  experience 
which  the  farmers  had  in  their  attempts  at  business 


COLLAPSE  OF  THE  GRANGER  MOVEMENT  63 

cooperation  was  probably  chief.  Their  hatred  of 
the  middleman  and  of  the  manufacturer  was  almost 
as  intense  as  their  hostility  to  the  railroad  magnate; 
quite  naturally,  therefore,  the  farmers  attempted 
to  use  their  new  organizations  as  a  means  of  elimi- 
nating the  one  and  controlling  the  other.  As  in  the 
parallel  case  of  the  railroads,  the  farmers'  ani- 
mosity, though  it  was  probably  greater  than  the 
provocation  warranted,  was  not  without  grounds. 
The  middlemen  —  the  commission  merchants 
to  whom  the  farmer  sold  his  produce  and  the  retail 
dealers  from  whom  he  bought  his  supplies  —  did 
undoubtedly  make  use  of  their  opportunities  to 
drive  hard  bargains.  The  commission  merchant 
had  such  facilities  for  storage  and  such  knowledge 
of  market  conditions  that  he  frequently  could  take 
advantage  of  market  fluctuations  to  increase  his 
profits.  The  farmer  who  sold  his  produce  at  a 
low  price  and  then  saw  it  disposed  of  as  a  much 
higher  figure  was  naturally  enraged,  but  he  could 
devise  no  adequate  remedy.  Attempts  to  regu- 
late market  conditions  by  creating  an  artificial 
shortage  seldom  met  with  success.  The  slogan 
"Hold  your  hogs"  was  more  effective  as  a  catch- 
word than  as  an  economic  weapon.  The  retail 
dealers,  no  less  than  the  commission  men,  seemed 


64  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

to  the  farmer  to  be  unjust  in  their  dealings  with 
him.  In  the  small  agricultural  communities  there 
was  practically  no  competition.  Even  where  there 
were  several  merchants  in  one  town  these  could, 
and  frequently  did,  combine  to  fix  prices  which  the 
farmer  had  no  alternative  but  to  pay.  What  irked 
the  farmer  most  in  connection  with  these  "extor- 
tions "  was  that  the  middleman  seemed  to  be  a  non- 
producer,  a  parasite  who  lived  by  draining  the  agri- 
cultural classes  of  the  wealth  which  they  produced. 
Even  those  farmers  who  recognized  the  middleman 
as  a  necessity  had  little  conception  of  the  intricacy 
and  value  of  his  service. 

Against  the  manufacturer,  too,  the  farmer  had 
his  grievances.  He  felt  that  the  system  of  patent 
rights  for  farm  machinery  resulted  in  unfair  prices 
—  for  was  not  this  same  machinery  shipped  to 
Europe  and  there  sold  for  less  than  the  retail  price 
in  the  United  States?  Any  one  could  see  that  the 
manufacturer  must  have  been  making  more  than 
reasonable  profit  on  domestic  sales.  Moreover, 
there  were  at  this  time  many  abuses  of  patent 
rights.  Patents  about  to  expire  were  often  ex- 
tended through  political  influence  or  renewed  by 
means  of  slight  changes  which  were  claimed  to 
be  improvements.  A  more  serious  defect  in  the 


COLLAPSE  OF  THE  GRANGER  MOVEMENT  65 

patent  system  was  that  new  patents  were  not  thor- 
oughly investigated,  so  that  occasionally  one  was 
issued  on  an  article  which  had  long  been  in  common 
use.  That  a  man  should  take  out  a  patent  for  the 
manufacture  of  a  sliding  gate  which  farmers  had 
for  years  crudely  constructed  for  themselves  and 
should  then  collect  royalty  from  those  who  were 
using  the  gates  they  had  made,  naturally  enough 
aroused  the  wrath  of  his  victims. 

It  was  but  natural,  then,  that  the  Granges  should 
be  drawn  into  all  sorts  of  schemes  to  divert  into  the 
pockets  of  their  members  the  streams  of  wealth 
which  had  previously  flowed  to  the  greedy  middle- 
men. The  members  of  the  National  Grange,  think- 
ing that  these  early  schemes  for  cooperation  were 
premature,  did  not  at  first  take  them  up  and  stand- 
ardize them  but  left  them  entirely  in  the  hands  of 
local,  county,  and  state  Granges.  These  there- 
upon proceeded  to  "gang  their  ain  gait"  through 
the  unfamiliar  paths  of  business  operations  and  too 
frequently  brought  up  in  a  quagmire.  "This  pur- 
chasing business,"  said  Kelley  in  1867,  "com- 
menced with  buying  jackasses;  the  prospects  are 
that  many  will  be  sold. "  But  the  Grangers  went 
on  with  their  plans  for  business  cooperation  with 
ardor  undampened  by  such  forebodings.  Sometimes 


66  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

a  local  Grange  would  make  a  bargain  with  a  cer- 
tain dealer  of  the  vicinity,  whereby  members  were 
allowed  special  rates  if  they  bought  with  cash 
and  traded  only  with  that  dealer.  More  often  the 
local  grange  would  establish  an  agency,  with  either 
a  paid  or  a  voluntary  agent  who  would  forward  the 
orders  of  the  members  in  large  lots  to  the  manu- 
facturers or  wholesalers  and  would  thus  be  able  to 
purchase  supplies  for  cash  at  terms  considerably 
lower  than  the  retail  prices.  Frequently,  realizing 
that  they  could  get  still  more  advantageous  terms 
for  larger  orders,  the  Granges  established  a  county 
agency  which  took  over  the  work  of  several  local 
agents.  Sometimes  the  Patrons  even  embarked 
upon  the  more  ambitious  enterprise  of  cooperative 
stores. 

The  most  common  type  of  cooperative  store  was 
that  in  which  the  capital  was  provided  by  a  stock 
company  of  Grange  members  and  which  sold  goods 
to  Patrons  at  very  low  prices.  The  profits,  when 
there  were  any,  were  divided  among  the  stock- 
holders in  proportion  to  the  amount  of  stock  they 
held,  just  as  in  any  stock  company.  This  type  of 
store  was  rarely  successful  for  any  length  of  time. 
The  low  prices  at  which  it  sold  goods  were  likely  to 
involve  it  in  competition  with  other  merchants. 


COLLAPSE  OF  THE  GRANGER  MOVEMENT  67 

Frequently  these  men  would  combine  to  lower  their 
prices  and,  by  a  process  familiar  in  the  history  of 
business  competition,  "freeze  out"  the  cooperative 
store,  after  which  they  might  restore  their  prices  to 
the  old  levels.  The  farmers  seldom  had  sufficient 
spirit  to  buy  at  the  grange  store  if  they  found  better 
bargains  elsewhere;  so  the  store  was  assured  of  its 
clientele  only  so  long  as  it  sold  at  the  lowest  pos- 
sible prices.  Farmers'  agencies  for  the  disposal  of 
produce  met  with  greater  success.  Cooperative 
creameries  and  elevators  in  several  States  are  said 
to  have  saved  Grange  members  thousands  of  dol- 
lars. Sometimes  the  state  Grange,  instead  of  set- 
ting up  in  the  business  of  selling  produce,  chose 
certain  firms  as  Grange  agents  and  advised  Patrons 
to  sell  through  these  firms.  Where  the  choice  was 
wisely  made,  this  system  seems  to  have  saved  the 
farmers  about  as  much  money  without  involving 
them  in  the  risks  of  business. 

By  1876  the  members  of  the  National  Grange 
had  begun  to  study  the  problem  of  cooperation 
in  retailing  goods  and  had  come  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  the  so-called  "Rochdale  plan,"  a  system 
worked  out  by  an  English  association,  was  the  most 
practicable  for  the  cooperative  store.  The  Nation- 
al Grange  therefore  recommended  this  type  of 


68  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

organization.  The  stock  of  these  stores  wa.  sold 
only  to  Patrons,  at  five  dollars  a  share  and  in 
limited  amounts;  thus  the  stores  were  owned  by 
a  large  number  of  stockholders,  all  of  whom  had 
equal  voice  in  the  management  of  the  company. 
The  stores  sold  goods  at  ordinary  rates,  and  then  at 
the  end  of  the  year,  after  paying  a  small  dividend 
on  the  stock,  divided  their  profits  among  the  pur- 
chasers, according  to  the  amounts  purchased. 
This  plan  eliminated  the  violent  competition  which 
occurred  when  a  store  attempted  to  sell  goods  at 
cost,  and  at  the  same  time  saved  the  purchaser 
quite  as  much.  Unfortunately  the  Rochdale  plan 
found  little  favor  among  farmers  in  the  Middle 
West  because  of  their  unfortunate  experience 
with  other  cooperative  ventures.  In  the  East  and 
South,  however,  it  was  adopted  more  generally  and 
met  with  sufficient  success  to  testify  to  the  wis- 
dom of  the  National  Grange  in  recommending  it. 
In  its  attitude  toward  manufacturing,  the  Na- 
tional Grange  was  less  sane.  Not  content  with  the 
elimination  of  the  middlemen,  the  farmers  were 
determined  to  control  the  manufacture  of  their 
implements.  With  the  small  manufacturer  they 
managed  to  deal  fairly  well,  for  they  could  usually 
find  some  one  who  would  supply  the  Grange  with 


COLLAPSE  OF  THE  GRANGER  MOVEMENT  69 

implements  at  less  than  the  retail  price.  In  Iowa, 
where  the  state  Grange  early  established  an  agency 
for  cooperative  buying,  the  agent  managed  to  per- 
suade a  manufacturer  of  plows  to  give  a  discount 
to  Grangers.  As  a  result,  this  manufacturer's  plows 
are  reported  to  have  left  the  factory  with  the  paint 
scarcely  dry,  while  his  competitors,  who  had  refused 
to  make  special  terms,  had  difficulty  in  disposing  of 
their  stock.  But  the  manufacturers  of  harvesters 
persistently  refused  to  sell  at  wholesale  rates.  The 
Iowa  Grange  thereupon  determined  to  do  its  own 
manufacturing  and  succeeded  in  buying  a  patent 
for  a  harvester  which  it  could  make  and  sell  for 
about  half  what  other  harvesters  cost.  In  1874 
some  250  of  these  machines  were  manufactured, 
and  the  prospects  looked  bright. 

Deceived  by  the  apparent  success  of  grange 
manufacturing  in  Iowa,  officers  of  the  order  at  once 
planned  to  embark  in  manufacturing  on  a  large 
scale.  The  National  Grange  was  rich  in  funds 
at  this  time;  it  had  within  a  year  received  well 
over  $250,000  in  dispensation  fees  from  seventeen 
thousand  new  Granges.  Angered  at  what  was  felt 
to  be  the  tyranny  of  monopoly,  the  officers  of  the 
National  Grange  decided  to  use  this  capital  in  man- 
ufacturing agricultural  implements  which  were  to 


70  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

be  sold  to  Patrons  at  very  low  prices.  They  went 
about  the  country  buying  patents  for  all  sorts  of 
farm  implements,  but  not  always  making  sure  of 
the  worth  of  the  machinery  or  the  validity  of  the 
patents.  In  Kansas,  Iowa,  Missouri,  Wisconsin, 
Illinois,  Indiana,  and  Kentucky,  they  planned  fac- 
tories to  make  harvesters,  plows,  wagons,  sewing- 
machines,  threshing-machines,  and  all  sorts  of  farm 
implements.  Then  came  the  crash.  The  Iowa 
harvester  factory  failed  in  1875  and  bankrupted  the 
state  Grange.  Other  failures  followed;  suits  for 
patent  infringements  were  brought  against  some  of 
the  factories;  local  Granges  disbanded  for  fear  they 
might  be  held  responsible  for  the  debts  incurred; 
and  in  the  Northwest,  where  the  activity  had  been 
the  greatest,  the  order  almost  disappeared. 

Although  the  Grange  had  a  mushroom  growth, 
it  nevertheless  exerted  a  real  and  enduring  influ- 
ence upon  farmers  both  as  individuals  and  as  mem- 
bers of  a  class.  Even  the  experiments  in  coopera- 
tion, disastrous  though  they  were  in  the  end,  were 
not  without  useful  results.  While  they  lasted  they 
undoubtedly  effected  a  considerable  saving  for  the 
farmers.  As  Grange  agents  or  as  stockholders  in 
cooperative  stores  or  Grange  factories,  many  farm- 
ers gained  valuable  business  experience  which 


COLLAPSE  OF  THE  GRANGER  MOVEMENT  71 

helped  to  prevent  them  from  being  victimized 
thereafter.  The  farmers  learned,  moreover,  the 
wisdom  of  working  through  the  accepted  channels 
of  business.  Those  who  had  scoffed  at  the  Roch- 
dale plan  of  cooperation,  in  the  homely  belief  that 
any  scheme  made  in  America  must  necessarily  be 
better  than  an  English  importation,  came  to  see 
that  self-confidence  and  independence  must  be 
tempered  by  willingness  to  learn  from  the  expe- 
rience of  others.  Most  important  of  all,  these  ex- 
periments in  business  taught  the  farmers  that  the 
middlemen  and  manufacturers  performed  services 
essential  to  the  agriculturalist  and  that  the  produc- 
tion and  distribution  of  manufactured  articles  and 
the  distribution  of  crops  are  far  more  complex  affairs 
than  the  farmers  had  imagined  and  perhaps  worthy 
of  more  compensation  than  they  had  been  accus- 
tomed to  think  just.  On  their  side,  the  manufac- 
turers and  dealers  learned  that  the  farmers  were 
not  entirely  helpless  and  that  to  gain  their  good- 
will by  fair  prices  was  on  the  whole  wiser  than  to 
force  them  into  competition.  Thus  these  ventures 
resulted  in  the  development  of  a  new  tolerance 
and  a  new  respect  between  the  two  traditionally 
antagonistic  classes. 
The  social  and  intellectual  stimulus  which  the 


72  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

farmers  received  from  the  movement  was  probably 
even  more  important  than  any  direct  political  or 
economic  results.  It  is  difficult  for  the  present 
generation  to  form  any  conception  of  the  dreari- 
ness and  dullness  of  farm  life  half  a  century  ago. 
Especially  in  the  West,  where  farms  were  large,  op- 
portunities for  social  intercourse  were  few,  and 
weeks  might  pass  without  the  farmer  seeing  any 
but  his  nearest  neighbors.  For  his  wife  existence 
was  even  more  drear.  She  went  to  the  market 
town  less  often  than  he  and  the  routine  of  her  life 
on  the  farm  kept  her  close  to  the  farmhouse  and 
prevented  visits  even  to  her  neighbors'  dwellings. 
The  difficulty  of  getting  domestic  servants  made 
the  work  of  the  farmer's  wife  extremely  laborious; 
and  at  that  time  there  were  none  of  the  modern 
conveniences  which  lighten  work  such  as  power 
churns,  cream  separators,  and  washing-machines. 
Even  more  than  the  husband,  the  wife  was  likely  to 
degenerate  into  a  drudge  without  the  hope  —  and 
eventually  without  the  desire  —  of  anything  better. 
The  church  formed,  to  be  sure,  a  means  of  social 
intercourse;  but  according  to  prevailing  religious 
notions  the  churchyard  was  not  the  place  nor  the 
Sabbath  the  time  for  that  healthy  but  unrestrained 
hilarity  which  is  essential  to  the  well-being  of  man. 


COLLAPSE  OP  THE  GRANGER  MOVEMENT  73 

Into  lives  thus  circumscribed  the  Grange  came  as 
a  liberalizing  and  uplifting  influence.  Its  admis- 
sion of  women  into  the  order  on  the  same  terms 
as  men  made  it  a  real  community  servant  and  gave 
both  women  and  men  a  new  sense  of  the  dignity  of 
woman.  More  important  perhaps  than  any  change 
in  theories  concerning  womankind,  it  afforded  an 
opportunity  for  men  and  women  to  work  and  play 
together,  apparently  much  to  the  satisfaction  and 
enjoyment  of  both  sexes.  Not  only  in  Grange 
meetings,  which  came  at  least  once  a  month  and 
often  more  frequently,  but  also  in  Grange  picnics 
and  festivals  the  farmers  and  their  wives  and  chil- 
dren came  together  for  joyous  human  intercourse. 
Such  frequent  meetings  were  bound  to  work  a 
change  of  heart.  Much  of  man's  self-respect  arises 
from  the  esteem  of  others,  and  the  desire  to  keep 
that  esteem  is  certainly  a  powerful  agent  in  social 
welfare.  It  was  reported  that  in  many  communi- 
ties the  advent  of  the  Grange  created  a  marked  im- 
provement in  the  dress  and  manners  of  the  mem- 
bers. Crabbed  men  came  out  of  their  shells  and 
grew  genial;  disheartened  women  became  cheerful; 
repressed  children  delighted  in  the  chance  to  play 
with  other  boys  and  girls  of  their  own  age. 

The  ritual  of  the  Grange,  inculcating  lessons  of 


74  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

orderliness,  industry,  thrift,  and  temperance,  ex- 
pressed the  members'  ideals  in  more  dignified  and 
pleasing  language  than  they  themselves  could  have 
invented.  The  songs  of  the  Grange  gave  an  op- 
portunity for  the  exercise  of  the  musical  sense  of 
people  not  too  critical  of  literary  quality,  when 
with  "spontaneous  trills  on  every  tongue,"  as  one 
of  the  songs  has  it,  the  members  varied  the  ritual 
with  music. 

One  of  the  virtues  especially  enjoined  on  Grange 
members  was  charity.  Ceres,  Pomona,  and  Flora, 
offices  of  the  Grange  to  be  filled  only  by  women, 
were  made  to  represent  Faith,  Hope,  and  Charity, 
respectively;  and  in  the  ceremony  of  dedicating 
the  Grange  hall  these  three  stood  always  beside  the 
altar  while  the  chaplain  read  the  thirteenth  chap- 
ter of  First  Corinthians.  Not  only  in  theory  but 
in  practice  did  the  order  proclaim  its  devotion  to 
charitable  work.  It  was  not  uncommon  for  mem- 
bers of  a  local  Grange  to  foregather  and  harvest  the 
crops  for  a  sick  brother  or  help  rebuild  a  house  de- 
stroyed by  fire  or  tornado.  In  times  of  drought  or 
plague  both  state  and  national  Granges  were  gener- 
ous in  donations  for  the  sufferers;  in  1874,  when 
the  Mississippi  River  overflowed  its  banks  in  its 
lower  reaches,  money  and  supplies  were  sent  to  the 


COLLAPSE  OF  THE  GRANGER  MOVEMENT  75 

farmers  of  Louisiana  and  Alabama;  again  in  the 
same  year  relief  was  sent  to  those  Patrons  who 
suffered  from  the  grasshopper  plague  west  of  the 
Mississippi;  and  in  1876  money  was  sent  to  South 
Carolina  to  aid  sufferers  from  a  prolonged  drought 
in  that  State.  These  charitable  deeds,  endearing 
giver  and  receiver  to  each  other,  resulted  in  a  bet- 
ter understanding  and  a  greater  tolerance  between 
people  of  different  parts  of  the  country. 

The  meetings  of  the  local  Granges  were  forums 
hi  which  the  members  trained  themselves  in  pub- 
lic speaking  and  parliamentary  practice.  Pro- 
grams were  arranged,  sometimes  with  the  help  of 
suggestions  from  officers  of  the  state  Grange;  and 
the  discussion  of  a  wide  variety  of  topics,  mostly 
economic  and  usually  concerned  especially  with  the 
interests  of  the  farmer,  could  not  help  being  stimu- 
lating, even  if  conclusions  were  sometimes  reached 
which  were  at  variance  with  orthodox  political 
economy.  The  Grange  was  responsible,  too,  for  a 
great  increase  in  the  number  and  circulation  of  agri- 
cultural journals.  Many  of  these  papers  were  rec- 
ognized as  official  organs  of  the  order  and,  by  pub- 
lishing news  of  the  Granges  and  discussing  the 
political  and  economic  phases  of  the  farmers*  move- 
ment, they  built  up  an  extensive  circulation.  Rural 


76  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

postmasters  everywhere  reported  a  great  increase 
in  their  mails  after  the  establishment  of  a  Grange 
in  the  vicinity.  One  said  that  after  the  advent  of 
the  order  there  were  thirty  newspapers  taken  at  his 
office  where  previously  there  had  been  but  one. 
Papers  for  which  members  or  local  Granges  sub- 
scribed were  read,  passed  from  hand  to  hand,  and 
thoroughly  discussed.  This  is  good  evidence  that 
farmers  were  forming  the  habit  of  reading.  All 
the  Granger  laws  might  have  been  repealed;  all 
the  schemes  for  cooperation  might  have  come  to 
naught;  all  the  moral  and  religious  teachings  of  the 
Grange  might  have  been  left  to  the  church;  but 
if  the  Granger  movement  had  created  nothing 
else  than  this  desire  to  read,  it  would  have  been 
worth  while.  For  after  the  farmer  began  to  read, 
he  was  no  longer  like  deadwood  floating  in  the 
backwaters  of  the  current;  he  became  more  like 
a  propelled  vessel  in  midstream  —  sometimes,  to 
be  sure,  driven  into  turbulent  waters,  sometimes 
tossed  about  by  conflicting  currents,  but  at  least 
making  progress. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  GREENBACK  INTERLUDE 

WHATEVER  may  have  been  the  causes  of  the  col- 
lapse of  the  Granger  movement  in  1875  and  1876, 
returning  prosperity  for  the  Western  farmer  was 
certainly  not  one  of  them,  for  the  general  agricul- 
tural depression  showed  no  signs  of  lifting  until 
nearly  the  end  of  the  decade.  During  the  Granger 
period  the  farmer  attempted  to  increase  his  narrow 
margin  of  profit  or  to  turn  a  deficit  into  a  profit  by 
decreasing  the  cost  of  transportation  and  eliminat- 
ing the  middleman.  Failing  in  this  attempt,  he 
decided  that  the  remedy  for  the  situation  was  to  be 
found  in  increasing  the  prices  for  his  products  and 
checking  the  appreciation  of  his  debts  by  increas- 
ing the  amount  of  money  in  circulation. 

This  demand  for  currency  inflation  was  by  no 
means  new  when  it  was  taken  up  by  the  West- 
ern farmers.  It  had  played  a  prominent  part  in 
American  history  from  colonial  days,  especially  in 

77 


78  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

periods  of  depression  and  in  the  less  prosperous 
sections  of  the  ever  advancing  frontier.  During 
the  Civil  War,  inflation  was  actually  accomplished 
through  the  issue  of  over  $400,000,000  in  legal-ten- 
der notes  known  as  "greenbacks.5*  No  definite 
time  for  the  redemption  of  these  notes  was  speci- 
fied, and  they  quickly  declined  in  value  as  com- 
pared with  gold.  At  the  close  of  the  war  a  paper 
dollar  was  worth  only  about  hah*  its  face  value  in 
gold.  An  attempt  was  made  to  raise  the  relative 
value  of  the  greenbacks  and  to  prepare  for  the  re- 
sumption of  specie  payments  by  retiring  the  paper 
money  from  circulation  as  rapidly  as  possible. 
This  policy  meant,  of  course,  a  contraction  of  the 
volume  of  currency  and  consequently  met  with 
immediate  opposition.  In  February,  1868,  Con- 
gress prohibited  the  further  retirement  of  green- 
backs and  left  to  the  discretion  of  the  Secretary  of 
the  Treasury  the  reissue  of  the  $44,000,000  which 
had  been  retired.  Only  small  amounts  were  reis- 
sued, however,  until  after  the  panic  of  1873;  and 
when  Congress  attempted,  in  April,  1874,  to  force  a 
permanent  increase  of  the  currency  to  $400,000,000, 
President  Grant  vetoed  the  bill. 

Closely  related  to  the  currency  problem  was  that 
of  the  medium  to  be  used  in  the  payment  of  the 


THE  GREENBACK  INTERLUDE          79 

principal  of  bonds  issued  during  the  Civil  War. 
When  the  bonds  were  sold,  it  was  generally  under- 
stood that  they  would  be  redeemed  in  gold  or  its 
equivalent.  Some  of  the  issues,  however,  were 
covered  by  no  specific  declaration  to  that  effect, 
and  a  considerable  sentiment  arose  in  favor  of  re- 
deeming them  with  currency,  or  lawful  money,  as 
it  was  called. 

These  questions  were  not  party  issues  at  first, 
and  there  was  no  clear-cut  division  upon  them  be- 
tween the  two  old  parties  throughout  the  period. 
The  alinement  was  by  class  and  section  rather  than 
by  party;  and  inflationists  and  advocates  of  the  re- 
demption of  the  bonds  in  currency  were  to  be  found 
not  only  among  the  rank  and  file  but  also  among 
the  leaders  of  both  parties.  The  failure  of  either 
the  Democrats  or  the  Republicans  to  take  a  de- 
cided stand  on  these  questions  resulted,  as  so  often 
before,  in  the  development  of  third  parties  which 
made  them  the  main  planks  in  the  new  platform. 

The  first  attempts  at  organized  political  activity 
in  behalf  of  greenbackism  came  not  from  the  farm- 
ers of  the  West  but  from  the  laboring  men  of  the 
East,  whose  growing  class  consciousness  resulted 
hi  the  organization  of  the  National  Labor  Union  in 
1868.  Accompanying,  if  not  resulting  from  the 


80  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

Government's  policy  of  contraction,  came  a  fall  of 
prices  and  widespread  unemployment.  It  is  not 
strange,  therefore,  that  this  body  at  once  declared 
itself  in  favor  of  inflation.  The  plan  proposed  was 
what  was  known  as  the  "American  System  of  Fi- 
nance " :  money  was  to  be  issued  only  by  the  Gov- 
ernment and  in  the  form  of  legal-tender  paper  re- 
deemable only  with  bonds  bearing  a  low  rate  of 
interest,  these  bonds  in  turn  to  be  convertible  into 
greenbacks  at  the  option  of  the  holder.  The  Na- 
tional Labor  Union  recommended  the  nomination 
of  workingmen's  candidates  for  offices  and  made 
arrangements  for  the  organization  of  a  National 
Labor  party.  This  convened  in  Columbus  in  Feb- 
ruary, 1872,  adopted  a  Greenback  platform,  and 
nominated  David  Davis  of  Illinois  as  its  candidate 
for  the  presidency.  After  the  nomination  of  Hor- 
ace Greeley  by  the  Liberal  Republicans,  Davis 
declined  this  nomination,  and  the  executive  com- 
mittee of  his  party  then  decided  that  it  was  too  late 
to  name  another  candidate. 

This  early  period  of  inflation  propaganda  has 
been  described  as  "the  social  reform  period,  or 
the  wage-earners'  period  of  greenbackism,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  inflationist,  or  farmers'  period 
that  followed."  The  primary  objects  of  the  labor 


THE  GREENBACK  INTERLUDE    81 

reformers  were,  it  appears,  to  lower  the  rate  of  inter- 
est on  money  and  to  reduce  taxation  by  the  trans- 
formation of  the  war  debt  into  interconvertible 
bonds.  The  farmers,  on  the  other  hand,  were  inter- 
ested primarily  in  the  expansion  of  the  currency  in 
the  hope  that  this  would  result  in  higher  prices  for 
their  products.  It  was  not  until  the  panic  of  1873 
had  intensified  the  agricultural  depression  and  the 
Granger  movement  had  failed  to  relieve  the  situa- 
tion that  the  farmers  of  the  West  took  hold  of 
greenbackism  and  made  it  a  major  political  issue. 

The  independent  parties  of  the  Granger  period, 
as  a  rule,  were  not  in  favor  of  inflation.  Their 
platforms  in  some  cases  demanded  a  speedy  return 
to  specie  payment.  In  1873  Ignatius  Donnelly, 
in  a  pamphlet  entitled  Facts  for  the  Granges,  de- 
clared: "There  is  too  much  paper  money.  The 
currency  is  diluted  —  watered  —  weakened.  .  .  . 
We  have  no  interest  in  an  inflated  money  market. 
...  As  we  have  to  sell  our  wheat  at  the  world's 
price,  it  is  our  interest  that  everything  we  buy 
should  be  at  the  world's  price.  Specie  payments 
would  practically  add  eighteen  cents  to  the  price 
of  every  bushel  of  wheat  we  have  to  sell!"  In 
Indiana  and  Illinois,  however,  the  independent 
parties  were  captured  by  the  Greenbackers,  and 


82  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

the  Indiana  party  issued  the  call  for  the  confer- 
ence at  Indianapolis  in  November,  1874,  which  led 
to  the  organization  of  the  National  Greenback 
party. 

This  conference  was  attended  by  representatives 
from  seven  States  and  included  several  who  had 
been  prominent  in  the  Labor  Reform  movement. 
"  The  political  Moses  of  the  'New  Party, ' "  accord- 
ing to  the  Chicago  Tribune,  was  James  Buchanan 
of  Indianapolis,  a  lawyer  "with  an  ability  and 
shrewdness  that  compel  respect,  however  much  his 
theories  may  be  ridiculed  and  abused."  He  was 
also  the  editor  of  the  Sun,  a  weekly  paper  which 
supported  the  farmers'  movement.  The  platform 
committee  of  the  conference  reported  in  favor  of 
"a  new  political  organization  of  the  people,  by  the 
people,  and  for  the  people,  to  restrain  the  aggres- 
sions of  combined  capital  upon  the  rights  and  in- 
terests of  the  masses,  to  reduce  taxation,  correct 
abuses,  and  to  purify  all  departments  of  the  Gov- 
ernment." The  most  important  issue  before  the 
people  was  declared  to  be  "the  proper  solution  of 
the  money  question,"  meaning  thereby  the  issue 
of  greenbacks  interconvertible  with  bonds.  A  na- 
tional convention  of  the  party  was  called  to  meet  at 
Cleveland  on  March  11,  1875. 


THE  GREENBACK  INTERLUDE    83 

The  Cleveland  convention,  attended  by  repre- 
sentatives of  twelve  States,  completed  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  Independent  party,  as  it  was  officially 
named,  and  made  arrangements  for  the  nominat- 
ing convention.  This  was  held  at  Indianapolis 
on  May  17,  1876,  with  240  delegates  representing 
eighteen  States.  Ignatius  Donnelly,  who  had  ap- 
parently changed  his  mind  on  the  currency  ques- 
tion since  1873,  was  the  temporary  president.  The 
platform  contained  the  usual  endorsement  of  a 
circulating  medium  composed  of  legal-tender  notes 
interconvertible  with  bonds  but  gave  first  place  to 
a  demand  for  "the  immediate  and  unconditional 
repeal  of  the  specie-resumption  act."  This  meas- 
ure, passed  by  Congress  in  January,  1875,  had 
fixed  January  1,  1879,  as  the  date  when  the  Gov- 
ernment would  redeem  greenbacks  at  their  face 
value  in  coin.  Although  the  act  made  provision 
for  the  permanent  retirement  of  only  a  part  of  the 
greenbacks  from  circulation,  the  new  party  de- 
nounced it  as  a  "suicidal  and  destructive  policy  of 
contraction. "  Another  plank  in  the  platform,  and 
one  of  special  interest  in  view  of  the  later  free  silver 
agitation,  was  a  protest  against  the  sale  of  bonds 
for  the  purpose  of  purchasing  silver  to  be  sub- 
stituted for  the  fractional  currency  of  war  times. 


84  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

This  measure,  it  was  asserted,  "although  well 
calculated  to  enrich  owners  of  silver  mines  .  .  . 
will  still  further  oppress,  in  taxation,  an  already 
overburdened  people." 

There  was  a  strong  movement  in  the  convention 
for  the  nomination  of  David  Davis  for  the  presi- 
dency, but  this  seems  to  have  met  with  opposition 
from  Eastern  delegates  who  remembered  his  deser- 
tion of  the  National  Labor  Reform  party  in  1872: 
Peter  Cooper  of  New  York  was  finally  selected 
as  the  candidate.  He  was  a  philanthropist  rather 
than  a  politician  and  was  now  eighty-five  years  old. 
Having  made  a  large  fortune  as  a  pioneer  in  the 
manufacture  of  iron,  he  left  his  business  cares  to 
other  members  of  his  family  and  devoted  himself 
to  the  education  and  elevation  of  the  working 
classes.  His  principal  contribution  to  this  cause 
was  the  endowment  of  the  famous  Cooper  Union 
in  New  York,  where  several  thousand  persons, 
mostly  mechanics,  attended  classes  in  a  variety 
of  technical  and  educational  subjects  and  enjoyed 
the  privileges  of  a  free  library  and  reading  room. 
When  notified  of  his  nomination,  Cooper  at  first 
expressed  the  hope  that  one  or  both  of  the  old 
parties  might  adopt  such  currency  planks  as  would 
make  the  new  movement  unnecessary.  Later  he 


THE  GREENBACK  INTERLUDE    85 

accepted  unconditionally  but  took  no  active  part 
in  the  campaign. 

The  Greenback  movement  at  first  made  but  slow 
progress  in  the  various  States.  In  Indiana  and 
Illinois  the  existing  independent  organizations  be- 
came component  parts  of  the  new  party,  although 
in  Illinois,  at  least,  quite  a  number  of  the  former 
leaders  returned  to  the  old  parties.  In  the  other 
Western  States,  however,  the  third  parties  of  the 
Granger  period  had  gone  to  pieces  or  had  been  ab- 
sorbed by  means  of  fusion,  and  new  organizations 
had  to  be  created.  In  Indiana  the  Independent 
party  developed  sufficient  strength  to  scare  the 
Republican  leaders  and  to  cause  one  of  them  to 
write  to  Hayes:  "A  bloody-shirt  campaign,  with 
money,  and  Indiana  is  safe;  a  financial  campaign 
and  no  money  and  we  are  beaten." 

The  Independents  do  not  appear  to  have  made 
a  very  vigorous  campaign  in  1876.  The  coffers  of 
the  party  were  as  empty  as  the  pockets  of  the  farm- 
ers who  were  soon  to  swell  its  ranks;  and  this  made 
a  campaign  of  the  usual  sort  impossible.  One  big 
meeting  was  held  in  Chicago  in  August,  with  Sam- 
uel F.  Gary,  the  nominee  for  Vice-President,  as 
the  principal  attraction;  and  this  was  followed 
by  a  torchlight  procession.  A  number  of  papers 


86  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

published  by  men  who  were  active  in  the  movement, 
such  as  Buchanan's  Indianapolis  Star,  Noonan's 
Industrial  Age  of  Chicago,  and  Donnelly's  Anti- 
Monopolist  of  St.  Paul,  labored  not  without  avail  to 
spread  the  gospel  among  their  readers.  The  most 
effective  means  of  propaganda,  however,  was  prob- 
ably the  Greenback  Club.  At  a  conference  in 
Detroit  in  August,  1875,  "the  organization  of 
Greenback  Clubs  in  every  State  in  the  Union  "  was 
recommended,  and  the  work  was  carried  on  under 
the  leadership  of  Marcus  M.  Pomeroy.  "Brick" 
Pomeroy  was  a  journalist,  whose  sobriquet  resulted 
from  a  series  of  Brickdust  Sketches  of  prominent 
Wisconsin  men  which  he  published  in  one  of  his 
papers.  As  the  editor  of  Brick  Pomeroy' s  Demo- 
crat, a  sensational  paper  published  in  New  York, 
he  had  gained  considerable  notoriety.  In  1875, 
after  the  failure  of  this  enterprise  he  undertook  to 
retrieve  his  broken  fortunes  by  editing  a  Greenback 
paper  in  Chicago  and  by  organizing  Greenback 
clubs  for  which  this  paper  served  as  an  organ. 
Pomeroy  also  wrote  and  circulated  a  series  of  tracts 
with  such  alluring  titles  as  Hot  Drops  and  Meat  for 
Men.  Several  thousand  clubs  were  organized  in 
the  Northwest  during  the  next  few  years,  princi- 
pally in  the  rural  regions,  and  the  secrecy  of  their 


THE  GREENBACK  INTERLUDE    87 

proceedings  aroused  the  fear  that  they  were  ad- 
vocating communism.  The  members  of  the  clubs 
and  their  leaders  constituted,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  more  radical  of  the  Greenbackers.  They  usu- 
ally opposed  fusion  with  the  Democrats  and  often 
refused  to  follow  the  regular  leaders  of  the  party. 

In  the  election  the  Greenback  ticket  polled  only 
about  eighty  thousand  votes,  or  less  than  one  per 
cent  of  the  total.  In  spite  of  the  activity  of  former 
members  of  the  Labor  Reform  party  in  the  move- 
ment, Pennsylvania  was  the  only  Eastern  State  in 
which  the  new  party  made  any  considerable  show- 
ing. In  the  West  over  6000  votes  were  cast  in 
each  of  the  five  States  —  Indiana,  Illinois,  Michi- 
gan, Iowa,  and  Kansas.  The  agrarian  aspect  of  the 
movement  was  now  uppermost,  but  the  vote  of 
17,000  polled  in  Illinois,  though  the  largest  of  the 
group,  was  less  than  a  quarter  of  the  votes  cast  by 
the  state  Independent  Reform  party  in  1874  when 
railroad  regulation  had  been  the  dominant  issue. 
Clearly  many  farmers  were  not  yet  convinced  of 
the  necessity  of  a  Greenback  party.  The  only 
tangible  achievement  of  the  party  in  1876  was  the 
election  of  a  few  members  of  the  Illinois  Legislature 
who  held  the  balance  between  the  old  parties  and 
were  instrumental  in  sending  David  Davis  to  the 


88  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

United  States  Senate.  This  vote,  it  is  interesting 
to  note,  kept  Davis  from  serving  on  the  electoral 
commission  and  thus  probably  prevented  Tilden 
from  becoming  President. 

But  the  Greenback  movement  was  to  find  fresh 
impetus  in  1877,  a  year  of  exceptional  unrest  and 
discontent  throughout  the  Union.  The  agricul- 
tural depression  was  even  greater  than  in  preced- 
ing years,  while  the  great  railroad  strikes  were  evi- 
dence of  the  distress  of  the  workingmen.  This  situ- 
ation was  reflected  in  politics  by  the  rapid  growth 
of  the  Greenback  party  and  the  reappearance  of 
labor  parties  with  Greenback  planks.1 

In  the  following  year  the  new  party  had  an  ex- 
cellent opportunity  to  demonstrate  its  strength 
wherever  it  existed.  In  February,  1878,  a  confer- 
ence was  held  at  Toledo  for  the  purpose  of  welding 
the  various  political  organizations  of  workingmen 

1  In  state  elections  from  Massachusetts  to  Kansas  the  Greenback 
and  labor  candidates  polled  from  5  to  15  per  cent  of  the  total  vote,  and 
in  most  cases  the  Greenback  vote  would  probably  have  been  much 
greater  had  not  one  or  the  other,  and  in  some  cases  both,  of  the  old 
parties  incorporated  part  of  theGreenbackdemands  in  then-  platforms. 
In  Wisconsin,  for  example,  there  was  little  difference  between  Demo- 
crats and  Greenbackers  on  the  currency  question,  and  even  the  Re- 
publicans in  their  platform  leaned  toward  inflation,  although  the 
candidates  declared  against  it.  No  general  elections  were  held  in 
1877  in  some  of  the  States  where  the  Greenback  sentiment  was  most 
pronounced. 


THE  GREENBACK  INTERLUDE    89 

and  advocates  of  inflation  into  an  effective  weapon 
as  a  single  united  party.  This  conference,  which 
was  attended  by  several  hundred  delegates  from 
twenty-eight  States,  adopted  "National"  as  the 
name  of  the  party,  but  it  was  usually  known  from 
this  time  on  as  the  Greenback  Labor  party.  The 
Toledo  platform,  as  the  resolutions  adopted  by  this 
conference  came  to  be  designated,  first  denounced 
"the  limiting  of  the  legal-tender  quality  of  green- 
backs, the  changing  of  currency-bonds  into  coin- 
bonds,  the  demonetization  of  the  silver  dollar,  the 
excepting  of  bonds  from  taxation,  the  contraction 
of  the  circulating  medium,  the  proposed  forced  re- 
sumption of  specie  payments,  and  the  prodigal 
waste  of  the  public  lands."  The  resolutions  which 
followed  demanded  the  suppression  of  bank  notes 
and  the  issue  of  all  money  by  the  Government,  such 
money  to  be  full  legal-tender  at  its  stamped  value 
and  to  be  provided  in  sufficient  quantity  to  insure 
the  full  employment  of  labor  and  to  establish  a  rate 
of  interest  which  would  secure  to  labor  its  just  re- 
ward. Other  planks  called  for  the  coinage  of  silver 
on  the  same  basis  as  that  of  gold,  reservation  of  the 
public  lands  for  actual  settlers,  legislative  reduction 
of  the  hours  of  labor,  establishment  of  labor  bu- 
reaus, abolition  of  the  contract  system  of  employing 


90  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

prison  labor,  and  suppression  of  Chinese  immigra- 
tion. It  is  clear  that  in  this  platform  the  interests 
of  labor  received  full  consideration.  Just  before 
the  conference  adjourned  it  adopted  two  additional 
resolutions.  One  of  these,  adopted  in  response  to 
a  telegram  from  General  B.  F.  Butler,  denounced 
the  silver  bill  just  passed  by  Congress  because  it 
had  been  so  modified  as  to  limit  the  amount  of 
silver  to  be  coined.  The  other,  which  was  offered 
by  "Brick"  Pomeroy,  declared:  "We  will  not 
affiliate  in  any  degree  with  any  of  the  old  parties, 
but  in  all  cases  and  localities  will  organize  anew 
.  .  .  and  .  .  .  vote  only  for  men  who  entirely 
abandon  old  party  lines  and  organizations."  This 
attempt  to  forestall  fusion  was  to  be  of  no  avail, 
as  the  sequel  will  show,  but  Pomeroy  and  his  fol- 
lowers in  the  Greenback  clubs  adhered  throughout 
to  their  declaration. 

In  the  elections  of  1878,  the  high-water  mark  of 
the  movement,  about  a  million  votes  were  cast  for 
Greenback  candidates.  Approximately  two-thirds 
of  the  strength  of  the  party  was  in  the  Middle  West 
and  one-third  in  the  East.  That  the  movement, 
even  in  the  East,  was  largely  agrarian,  is  indicated 
by  the  famous  argument  of  Solon  Chase,  chairman 
of  the  party  convention  in  Maine.  "Inflate  the 


THE  GREENBACK  INTERLUDE    91 

currency,  and  you  raise  the  price  of  my  steers  and 
at  the  same  time  pay  the  public  debt."  "Them 
steers  "  gave  Chase  a  prominent  place  in  politics  for 
half  a  decade.  The  most  important  achievement 
of  the  movement  at  this  time  was  the  election  to 
Congress  of  fifteen  members  who  were  classified  as 
Nationals  —  six  from  the  East,  six  from  the  Middle 
West,  and  three  from  the  South.  In  most  cases 
these  men  secured  their  election  through  fusion 
or  through  the  failure  of  one  of  the  old  parties  to 
make  nominations. 

Easily  first  among  the  Greenbackers  elected  to 
Congress  in  1878  was  General  James  B.  Weaver  of 
Iowa.  When  ten  years  of  age,  Weaver  had  been 
taken  by  his  parents  to  Iowa  from  Ohio,  his  native 
State.  In  1854,  he  graduated  from  a  law  school  in 
Cincinnati,  and  for  some  years  thereafter  practiced 
his  profession  and  edited  a  paper  at  Bloomfield  in 
Davis  County,  Iowa.  He  enlisted  in  the  army  as 
a  private  in  1861,  displayed  great  bravery  at  the 
battles  of  Donelson  and  Shiloh,  and  received  rapid 
promotion  to  the  rank  of  colonel.  At  the  close  of 
the  war  he  received  a  commission  as  brigadier  gen- 
eral by  brevet.  Weaver  ran  his  first  tilt  in  state 
politics  in  an  unsuccessful  attempt  to  obtain  the 
Republican  nomination  for  lieutenant  governor  in 


92  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

1865.  Although  an  ardent  advocate  of  prohibition 
and  of  state  regulation  of  railroads,  Weaver  re-1 
mained  loyal  to  the  Republican  party  during  the 
Granger  period  and  in  1875  was  a  formidable 
candidate  for  the  gubernatorial  nomination.  It  is 
said  that  a  majority  of  the  delegates  to  the  conven- 
tion had  been  instructed  in  his  favor,  but  the  rail- 
road and  liquor  interests  succeeded  in  stampeding 
the  convention  to  Samuel  J.  Kirkwood,  the  popu- 
lar war  governor.  In  the  following  year  Weaver 
took  part  in  the  organization  of  the  Independent  or 
Greenback  party  in  Iowa  and  accepted  a  position 
on  its  state  committee.  Though  resentment  at  the 
treatment  which  he  had  received  from  the  Repub- 
licans may  have  influenced  him  to  break  the  old 
ties,  he  was  doubtless  sincerely  convinced  that  the 
Republican  party  was  beyond  redemption  and 
that  the  only  hope  for  reform  lay  in  the  new  party 
movement. 

Weaver  was  gifted  with  remarkable  talent  as  an 
orator.  His  fine  face  and  soldierly  bearing,  his  rich 
sympathetic  voice  and  vivid  imagination,  made 
him  a  favorite  speaker  at  soldiers'  reunions  and  in 
political  campaigns.  Lacking  the  eccentricities  of 
so  many  of  his  third  party  associates  and  never 
inclined  to  go  to  extremes  in  his  radicalism,  he  was 


THE  GREENBACK  INTERLUDE    93 

one  of  the  ablest  and,  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
Republicans,  the  most  dangerous  of  the  Greenback 
leaders.  In  Congress  Weaver  won  the  respect  of 
his  colleagues.  Always  ready  to  promote  what  he 
believed  to  be  the  interests  of  the  common  people 
and  especially  of  the  farmers,  he  espoused  the  cause 
of  the  Oklahoma  "boomers,"  who  were  opposed  by 
a  powerful  lobby  representing  the  interests  of  the 
"cattle  barons."  He  declared  that,  in  a  choice 
between  bullocks  and  babies,  he  would  stand  for 
babies,  and  he  staged  a  successful  filibuster  at  the 
close  of  a  session  in  order  to  force  the  consideration 
of  a  bill  for  the  opening  of  part  of  Oklahoma  to 
settlement. 

The  preliminaries  of  the  campaign  of  1880  were 
vexed  by  dissension  within  the  ranks  of  the  Green- 
backers.  In  March  the  radical  faction  led  by 
Pomeroy  held  a  convention  in  St.  Louis  which 
claimed  to  speak  for  ten  thousand  Greenback  clubs 
and  two  million  voters.  After  Stephen  D.  Dil- 
laye  of  New  York  had  refused  the  presidential 
nomination  at  the  hands  of  this  convention,  it  ad- 
journed to  meet  in  Chicago  on  the  9th  of  June  — 
the  place  and  time  already  selected  for  the  regular 
convention  of  the  National  party.  One  reason  for 
the  attitude  of  this  faction  appears  to  have  been 


94  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

the  fear  of  fusion  with  the  Democrats.  The  Chi- 
cago convention  finally  succeeded  in  absorbing 
these  malcontents,  as  well  as  a  group  of  socialist 
delegates  and  representatives  of  various  labor  or- 
ganizations who  asked  to  be  admitted.  Dennis 
Kearney,  the  notorious  sand-lot  agitator  of  Cali- 
fornia was  made  chief  sergeant  at  arms,  and  Susan 
B.  Anthony  was  allowed  to  give  a  suffrage  speech. 
The  platform  differed  from  earlier  Greenback  docu- 
ments in  that  it  contained  no  denunciation  of  the 
Resumption  Act.  That  was  now  a  dead  issue,  for 
on  January  1, 1879,  resumption  became  an  accom- 
plished fact,  and  the  paper  currency  was  worth  its 
face  value  in  gold.  Apart  from  this  the  platform 
was  much  the  same  as  that  adopted  at  Toledo  in 
1878,  with  the  addition  of  planks  favoring  women's 
suffrage,  a  graduated  income  tax,  and  congressional 
regulation  of  interstate  commerce.  On  the  first 
ballot,  General  Weaver  received  a  majority  of  the 
votes  for  presidential  nominee;  and  B.  J.  Chambers 
of  Texas  was  nominated  for  Vice-President. 

General  Weaver  in  his  letter  of  acceptance  de- 
clared it  to  be  his  intention  "to  visit  the  various  sec- 
tions of  the  Union  and  talk  to  the  people. "  This  he 
did,  covering  the  country  from  Arkansas  to  Maine 
and  from  Lake  Michigan  to  the  Gulf,  speaking 


JAMES  B.   WEAVER 
Photograph. 


94  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

the  fear  of  fusion  with  the  Democrats.  The  Chi- 
cago convention  finally  succeeded  in  absorbing 
these  malco  as  well  as  a  group  of  socialist 

Crates  and  representatives  of  various  labor  or- 

•,    >ns  who  asked  to  be  admitted,     Dennis 

e  notorious  sand-lot  agitator  of  Cali- 

>;»  was  made  chief  sergeant  at  arms,  and  Susan 
B.  Anthony  was  al)<  give  a  -  oh. 

platform  dil  eenback  docu- 

ments in  that  ^[.VT|  V11  <A  ,  u, ,  ^nunciation  of  the 
Bfpurnption  Act  ow  a  dead  issue,  for 

.ilqKiyntnilM 

on  January  1»  1879,  resumption  became  an  accom- 
plished fact,  and  the  paper  currency  was  worth  its 
face  value  in  gold.  Apart  from  this  the  platform 
was  much  the  same  as  that  adopted  at  Toledo  in 
1878,  with  the  addition  of  planks  favoring  women's 
suffrage,  a  graduated  income  tax,  and  congressional  / 
regulation  of  interstate  commerce.  On  the  first 
t,  General  Weaver  received  a  •  of  the 

votes  for  presidential  nominee;  and  B.  J.  Chambers 
of  Texas  was  nominated  for  <  nt. 

Gener;  er  in  his  letter  of  acceptance  de- 

clared it  to  1 ;  the  various  sec- 

tions of  the  T 1 1  *«on  and  talk  to  the  people. "    This  he 
covering  tl  om  Arkansas  to  Maine 

and  from  Lake  in  to  the  Gulf,  speaking 


THE  GREENBACK  INTERLUDE    95 

in  Faneuil  Hall  at  Boston  and  in  the  Cooper 
Union  at  New  York,  but  spending  the  greater 
part  of  his  time  in  the  Southern  States.  He  de- 
clared that  he  traveled  twenty  thousand  miles, 
made  fully  one  hundred  speeches,  shook  the  hands 
of  thirty  thousand  people,  and  was  heard  by  half  a 
million.  Weaver  was  the  first  presidential  candi- 
date to  conduct  a  campaign  of  this  sort,  and  the 
results  were  not  commensurate  with  his  efforts.  The 
Greenback  vote  was  only  308,578,  about  three  per 
cent  of  the  total.  One  explanation  of  the  small 
vote  would  seem  to  be  the  usual  disinclination  of 
people  to  vote  for  a  man  who  has  no  chance  of  elec- 
tion, however  much  they  may  approve  of  him  and 
his  principles,  when  they  have  the  opportunity  to 
make  their  votes  count  in  deciding  between  two 
other  candidates.  Then,  too,  the  sun  of  prosperity 
was  beginning  at  last  to  dissipate  the  clouds  of 
depression.  The  crops  of  corn,  wheat,  and  oats 
raised  in  1880  were  the  largest  the  country  had  ever 
known;  and  the  price  of  corn  for  once  failed  to  de- 
cline as  production  rose,  so  that  the  crop  was  worth 
half  as  much  again  as  that  of  1878.  When  the 
farmer  had  large  crops  to  dispose  of  at  remunera- 
tive prices,  he  lost  interest  in  the  inflation  of  the 
currency. 


96  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

After  1880  the  Greenback  party  rapidly  disin- 
tegrated. There  was  no  longer  any  hope  of  its  be- 
coming a  major  party,  in  the  near  future  at  least, 
and  the  more  conservative  leaders  began  to  drift 
back  into  the  old  parties  or  to  make  plans  for  fusion 
with  one  of  them  in  coming  elections.  But  fusion 
could  at  best  only  defer  the  end.  The  congression- 
al election  of  1882  clearly  demonstrated  that  the 
party  was  moribund.  Ten  of  the  Congressmen 
elected  in  1880  had  been  classified  as  Nationals; 
of  these  only  one  was  reflected  in  1882,  and  no  new 
names  appear  in  the  list.  It  is  probable,  however, 
that  a  number  of  Congressmen  classified  as  Demo- 
crats owed  their  election  in  part  to  fusion  between 
the  Democratic  and  Greenback  parties. 

The  last  appearance  of  the  Greenbackers  in 
national  politics  was  in  the  presidential  election  of 
1884.  In  May  of  that  year  a  convention  of  "The 
Anti-Monopoly  Organization  of  the  United  States," 
held  in  Chicago,  adopted  a  platform  voicing  a  de- 
mand for  legislative  control  of  corporations  and 
monopolies  in  the  interests  of  the  people  and  nom- 
inated General  Benjamin  F.  Butler  for  President. 
The  convention  of  the  Greenback  or  National 
party  met  in  Indianapolis,  and  selected  Butler  as 
its  candidate  also.  General  Weaver  presided  over 


THE  GREENBACK  INTERLUDE    97 

the  convention.  The  platform  contained  the  usual 
demands  of  the  party  with  the  exception  of  the  res- 
olution for  the  "free  and  unlimited  coinage  of  gold 
and  silver, "  which  was  rejected  by  a  vote  of  218  to 
164.  It  would  appear  that  the  majority  of  the 
delegates  preferred  to  rely  upon  legal-tender  paper 
to  furnish  the  ample  supply  of  money  desired. 
General  Butler  was  at  this  time  acting  with  the 
Democrats  in  Massachusetts,  and  his  first  response 
was  noncommittal.  Although  he  subsequently  ac- 
cepted both  nominations,  he  did  not  make  an  ac- 
tive campaign,  and  his  total  popular  vote  was  only 
175,370.  Butler's  personal  popularity  and  his  la- 
bor affiliations  brought  increased  votes  in  some  of 
the  Eastern  States  and  in  Michigan,  but  in  those 
Western  States  where  the  party  had  been  strong- 
est in  1880  and  where  it  had  been  distinctly  a  farm- 
ers' movement  there  was  a  great  falling  off  in  the 
Greenback  vote. 

Though  the  forces  of  agrarian  discontent  at- 
tained national  political  organization  for  the  first 
time  in  the  Greenback  party,  its  leaders  were  never 
able  to  obtain  the  support  of  more  than  a  minority 
of  the  farmers.  The  habit  of  voting  the  Republi- 
can or  the  Democratic  ticket,  firmly  estabh'shed 
by  the  Civil  War  and  by  Reconstruction,  was  too 


98  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

strong  to  be  lightly  broken;  and  many  who  favored 
inflation  could  not  yet  bring  themselves  to  the 
point  of  supporting  the  Greenback  party.  On  the 
other  hand  there  were  undoubtedly  many  farmers 
and  others  who  felt  that  the  old  parties  were  hope- 
lessly subservient  to  capitalistic  interests,  who  were 
ready  to  join  in  radical  movements  for  reform  and 
for  the  advancement  of  the  welfare  of  the  industrial 
classes,  but  who  were  not  convinced  that  the  struc- 
ture of  permanent  prosperity  for  farmer  and  work- 
ingman  could  be  built  on  a  foundation  of  fiat 
money.  Although  the  platforms  of  the  Green- 
backers  contained  many  demands  which  were 
soundly  progressive,  inflation  was  the  paramount 
issue  in  them;  and  with  this  issue  the  party  was 
unable  to  obtain  the  support  of  all  the  forces  of  dis- 
content, radicalism,  and  reform  which  had  been 
engendered  by  the  economic  and  political  condi- 
tions of  the  times.  The  Greenback  movement  was 
ephemeral.  Failing  to  solve  the  problem  of  agri- 
cultural depression,  it  passed  away  as  had  the 
Granger  movement  before  it;  but  the  greater  farm- 
ers' movement  of  which  both  were  a  part  went  on. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE   PLIGHT   OF   THE   FARMER 

AN  English  observer  of  agricultural  conditions  in 
1893  finds  that  agricultural  unrest  was  not  peculiar 
to  the  United  States  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  but  existed  in  all  the  more  advanced 
countries  of  the  world: 

Almost  everywhere,  certainly  in  England,  France, 
Germany,  Italy,  Scandinavia,  and  the  United  States, 
the  agriculturists,  formerly  so  instinctively  conserva- 
tive, are  becoming  fiercely  discontented,  declare  they 
gained  less  by  civilization  than  the  rest  of  the  com- 
munity, and  are  looking  about  for  remedies  of  a  drastic 
nature.  In  England  they  are  hoping  for  aid  from 
councils  of  all  kinds;  in  France  they  have  put  on  pro- 
tective duties  which  have  been  increased  in  vain  twice 
over;  in  Germany  they  put  on  and  relaxed  similar 
duties  and  are  screaming  for  them  again;  in  Scandi- 
navia —  Denmark  more  particularly  —  they  limit  the 
aggregation  of  land;  and  in  the  United  States  they 
create  organizations  like  the  Grangers,  the  Farmers' 
Leagues,  and  the  Populists.1 
1  The  Spectator,  vol.  LXX,  p.  1247. 
99 


100  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

It  is  to  general  causes,  indeed,  that  one  must  turn 
before  trying  to  find  the  local  circumstances  which 
aggravated  the  unrest  in  the  United  States,  or  at 
least  appeared  to  do  so.  The  application  of  power 
—  first  steam,  then  electricity  —  to  machinery  had 
not  only  vastly  increased  the  productivity  of  man- 
kind but  had  stimulated  invention  to  still  wider 
activity  and  lengthened  the  distance  between  man 
and  that  gaunt  specter  of  famine  which  had  dogged 
his  footsteps  from  the  beginning.  With  a  con- 
stantly growing  supply  of  the  things  necessary  for 
the  maintenance  of  life,  population  increased  tre- 
mendously: England,  which  a  few  centuries  be- 
fore had  been  overcrowded  with  fewer  than  four 
million  people,  was  now  more  bountifully  feeding 
and  clothing  forty  millions.  Perhaps,  all  in  all, 
mankind  was  better  off  than  it  had  ever  been  before; 
yet  different  groups  maintained  unequal  progress. 
The  tillers  of  the  soil  as  a  whole  remained  more 
nearly  in  their  primitive  condition  than  did  the 
dwellers  of  the  city.  The  farmer,  it  is  true,  pro- 
duced a  greater  yield  of  crops,  was  surrounded  by 
more  comforts,  and  was  able  to  enjoy  greater  lei- 
sure than  his  kind  had  ever  done  before.  The 
scythe  and  cradle  had  been  supplanted  by  the 
mower  and  reaper;  horse  harrows,  cultivators,  and 


THE  PLIGHT  OF  THE  FARMER         101 

rakes  had  transferred  much  of  the  physical  exertion 
of  farming  to  the  draft  animals.  But,  after  all,  the 
farmer  owed  less  to  steam  and  electricity  than  the 
craftsman  and  the  artisan  of  the  cities. 

The  American  farmer,  if  he  read  the  census  re- 
ports, might  learn  that  rural  wealth  had  increased 
from  nearly  $4,000,000,000  in  1850  to  not  quite 
$16,000,000,000  in  1890;  but  he  would  also  discover 
that  in  the  same  period  urban  wealth  had  advanced 
from  a  little  over  $3,000,000,000  to  more  than 
$49,000,000,000.  Forty  years  before  the  capital  of 
rural  districts  comprised  more  than  hah8  that  of  the 
whole  country,  now  it  formed  only  twenty-five  per 
cent.  The  rural  population  had  shown  a  steady 
proportionate  decrease:  when  the  first  census  was 
taken  in  1790,  the  dwellers  of  the  country  num- 
bered more  than  ten  times  those  of  the  city,  but  at 
the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  they  formed  only 
about  one-third  of  the  total.  Of  course  the  intelli- 
gent farmer  might  have  observed  that  food  for  the 
consumption  of  all  could  be  produced  by  the  work 
of  fewer  hands,  and  vastly  more  bountifully  as  well, 
and  so  he  might  have  explained  the  relative  decline 
of  rural  population  and  wealth;  but  when  the  aver- 
age farmer  saw  his  sons  and  his  neighbors'  sons 
more  and  more  inclined  to  seek  work  in  town  and 


102  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

leave  the  farm,  he  put  two  and  two  together  and 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  farming  was  in  a  peril- 
ous state.  He  heard  the  boy  who  had  gone  to  the 
city  boast  that  his  hours  were  shorter,  his  toil  less 
severe,  and  his  return  in  money  much  greater  than 
had  been  the  case  on  the  farm;  and  he  knew  that 
this  was  true.  Perhaps  the  farmer  did  not  realize 
that  he  had  some  compensations:  greater  security 
of  position  and  a  reasonable  expectation  that  old 
age  would  find  him  enjoying  some  sort  of  home, 
untroubled  by  the  worry  which  might  attend  the 
artisan  or  shopkeeper. 

Whether  or  not  the  American  farmer  realized 
that  the  nineteenth  century  had  seen  a  total  change 
in  the  economic  relations  of  the  world,  he  did  per- 
ceive clearly  that  something  was  wrong  in  his  own 
case.  The  first  and  most  impressive  evidence  of 
this  was  to  be  found  in  the  prices  he  received  for 
what  he  had  to  sell.  From  1883  to  1889  inclusive 
the  average  price  of  wheat  was  seventy-three  cents 
a  bushel,  of  corn  thirty-six  cents,  of  oats  twenty- 
eight  cents.  In  1890  crops  were  poor  in  most  of 
the  grain  areas,  while  prosperous  times  continued 
to  keep  the  consuming  public  of  the  manufactur- 
ing regions  able  to  buy;  consequently  corn  and  oats 
nearly  doubled  in  price,  and  wheat  advanced  20 


THE  PLIGHT  OF  THE  FARMER         103 

per  cent.  Nevertheless,  such  was  the  shortage,  ex- 
cept in  the  case  of  corn,  that  the  total  return  was 
smaller  than  it  had  been  for  a  year  or  two  before. 
In  1891  bumper  crops  of  wheat,  corn,  oats,  rye,  and 
barley  drove  the  price  down  on  all  except  wheat 
and  rye,  but  not  to  the  level  of  1889.  Despite  a 
much  smaller  harvest  in  1892  the  decline  continued, 
to  the  intense  disgust  of  the  farmers  of  Nebraska 
and  Minnesota  who  failed  to  note  that  the  entire 
production  of  wheat  in  the  world  was  normal  in 
that  year,  that  considerable  stores  of  the  previous 
crop  had  been  held  over  and  that  more  than  a  third 
of  the  yield  in  the  United  States  was  sent  forth  to 
compete  everywhere  with  the  crops  of  Argentine, 
Russia,  and  the  other  grain  producing  countries. 
No  wonder  the  average  farmer  of  the  Mississippi 
basin  was  ready  to  give  ear  to  any  one  who  could 
suggest  a  remedy  for  his  ills. 

Cotton,  which  averaged  nearly  eleven  cents  a 
pound  for  the  decade  ending  in  1890,  dropped  to 
less  than  nine  cents  in  1891  and  to  less  than  eight 
in  1892.  Cattle,  hogs,  sheep,  horses,  and  mules 
brought  more  in  the  late  than  in  the  early  eighties, 
yet  these,  too,  showed  a  decline  about  1890.  The 
abnormal  war-time  price  of  wool  which  was  more 
than  one  dollar  a  pound  in  October,  1864,  dropped 


104  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

precipitately  with  peace,  rose  a  little  just  before  the 
panic  of  1873,  and  then  declined  with  almost  no  re- 
action until  it  reached  thirty-three  cents  for  the 
highest  grade  in  1892. 

The  "roaring  eighties,"  with  all  their  superficial 
appearance  of  prosperity,  had  apparently  not 
brought  equal  cheer  to  all.  And  then  came  the 
"heart-breaking  nineties."  In  February,  1893, 
the  Philadelphia  and  Reading  Railroad  Company 
failed,  a  break  in  the  stock  market  followed,  and  an 
old-fashioned  panic  seized  the  country  in  its  grasp. 
A  period  of  hitherto  unparalleled  speculative  fren- 
zy came  thus  to  an  end,  and  sober  years  followed 
in  which  the  American  people  had  ample  opportu- 
nity to  contemplate  the  evils  arising  from  their 
economic  debauch. 

Prices  of  agricultural  products  continued  their 
downward  trend.  Wheat  touched  bottom  in  1894 
with  an  average  price  of  forty-nine  cents;  corn,  two 
years  later,  reached  twenty-one  cents.  All  the 
other  grains  were  likewise  affected.  Middling  cot- 
ton which  had  sold  at  eight  and  a  half  cents  a 
pound  in  1893,  dropped  below  seven  cents  the  fol- 
lowing year,  recovered  until  it  reached  nearly  eight 
cents  in  1896,  and  was  at  its  lowest  in  1898  at  just 
under  six  cents.  Of  all  the  marketable  products  of 


THE  PLIGHT  OF  THE  FARMER         105 

the  farm,  cattle,  hay,  and  hogs  alone  maintained 
the  price  level  of  the  decade  prior  to  1892.  Aver- 
age prices,  moreover,  do  not  fully  indicate  the 
small  return  which  many  farmers  received.  In  De- 
cember, 1891,  for  instance,  the  average  value  of  a 
bushel  of  corn  was  about  forty  cents,  but  in  Ne- 
braska, on  January  1,  1892,  corn  brought  only 
twenty-six  cents.  When,  a  few  years  later,  corn 
was  worth,  according  to  the  statistics,  just  over 
twenty-one  cents,  it  was  literally  cheaper  to  burn  it 
in  Kansas  or  Nebraska  than  to  cart  it  to  town,  sell 
it,  and  buy  coal  with  the  money  received;  and  this 
is  just  what  hundreds  of  despairing  farmers  did. 
Even  crop  shortage  did  little  to  increase  the  price  of 
the  grain  that  was  raised.  When  a  drought  seri- 
ously diminished  the  returns  in  Ohio,  Indiana,  and 
Michigan  in  1895,  the  importation  from  States 
farther  west  prevented  any  rise  in  price. 

Prices  dropped,  but  the  interest  on  mortgages  re- 
mained the  same.  One  hundred  and  seventy-four 
bushels  of  wheat  would  pay  the  interest  at  8  per 
cent  on  a  $2000  mortgage  in  1888,  when  the  price  of 
wheat  was  higher  than  it  had  been  for  ten  years  and 
higher  than  it  was  to  be  again  for  a  dozen  years.  In 
1894  or  1895  when  the  price  was  hovering  around 
fifty  cents,  it  took  320  bushels  to  pay  the  same 


106  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

interest.  Frequently  the  interest  was  higher  than  8 
per  cent,  and  outrageous  commissions  on  renewals 
increased  the  burden  of  the  farmer.  The  result 
was  one  foreclosure  after  another.  The  mortgage 
shark  was  identified  as  the  servant  of  the  "Wall 
Street  Octopus,"  and  between  them  there  was  little 
hope  for  the  farmer.  In  Kansas,  according  to  a 
contemporary  investigator,1  "the  whole  western 
third  of  the  State  was  settled  by  a  boom  in  farm 
lands.  Multitudes  of  settlers  took  claims  without 
means  of  their  own,  expecting  to  pay  for  the  land 
from  the  immediate  profits  of  farming.  Multitudes 
of  them  mortgaged  the  land  for  improvements,  and 
multitudes  more  expended  the  proceeds  of  mort- 
gages in  living.  When  it  was  found  that  the  pro- 
ceeds of  farming  in  that  part  of  the  State  were  very 
uncertain,  at  best,  the  mortgages  became  due.  And 
in  many  instances  those  who  had  been  nominally 
owners  remained  upon  the  farms  as  tenants  after 
foreclosure.  These  are  but  the  natural  effects  in 
reaction  from  a  tremendous  boom."  In  eastern 
Kansas,  where  settlement  was  older,  the  pressure  of 
hard  times  was  withstood  with  less  difficulty.  It 
was  in  western  Kansas,  by  the  way,  that  Populism 
had  its  strongest  following;  and,  after  the  election 

'G.  T.  Fairchild,  Pol.  Sc.  Q..  vol.  11,  p.  614. 


THE  PLIGHT  OF  THE  FARMER         107 

of  1892,  a  movement  to  separate  the  State  into  two 
commonwealths  received  serious  consideration. 

Even  more  inexorable  than  the  holder  of  the 
mortgage  or  his  agent  was  the  tax  collector.  It 
was  easy  to  demonstrate  that  the  farmer,  with  little 
or  nothing  but  his  land,  his  stock,  and  a  meager  out- 
fit of  implements  and  furniture,  all  readily  to  be 
seen  and  assessed,  paid  taxes  higher  in  proportion 
to  his  ability  to  pay  than  did  the  business  man  or 
the  corporation.  Although  his  equity  in  the  land 
he  owned  might  be  much  less  than  its  assessed  val- 
ue, he  was  not  allowed  to  make  any  deduction  for 
mortgages.  The  revenue  of  the  Federal  Govern- 
ment was  raised  wholly  by  indirect  taxes  levied 
principally  upon  articles  of  common  consumption; 
and  the  farmer  and  other  people  of  small  means 
paid  an  undue  share  of  the  burden  in  the  form  of 
higher  prices  demanded  for  commodities. 

Low  prices  for  his  produce,  further  depressed  by 
the  rapacity  of  the  railroads  and  the  other  inter- 
mediaries between  the  producer  and  the  consumer, 
mortgages  with  high  interest  rates,  and  an  inequit- 
able system  of  taxation  formed  the  burden  of  the 
farmer's  complaint  during  the  last  two  decades  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  These  grievances  and  all 
sorts  of  remedies  proposed  for  them  were  discussed 


108  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

in  farmers*  gatherings,  in  agricultural  weeklies, 
even  in  city  dailies,  and  ultimately  in  legislative 
chambers.  Investigations  demonstrated  that,  even 
when  reduced  to  a  minimum,  the  legitimate  grounds 
for  complaint  were  extensive;  and  the  resultant  re- 
ports suggested  a  variety  of  remedies.  Generally, 
however,  popular  sentiment  swung  around  again  to 
the  tack  it  had  taken  in  the  late  seventies:  the  real 
cure  for  all  the  evils  was  more  money.  Wall  Street 
and  the  national  banks  could  suck  the  blood  from 
the  western  community  because  of  their  monopoly 
of  the  money  supply.  According  to  one  irate  edi- 
tor, "Few  people  are  aware  of  the  boundless  ad- 
vantages that  the  national  banks  have  under  our 
present  accursed  system.  They  have  usurped  the 
credit  of  the  people  and  are  fattening  a  thousand- 
fold annually  from  the  unlimited  resources  at  their 
command."  Another  editor  wrote: 

We  find  the  following  printed  card  on  our  desk: 
"The  last  report  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury 
shows  the  banks  as  loaning  $1,970,022,687"!  Four 
times  the  amount  of  money  there  is  to  loan.  Four  in- 
terests in  every  dollar!  They  are  drawing  from  the 
people  enough  to  run  the  National  Government.  How 
long  will  it  take  them  to  gather  in  all  the  money  of  the 
nation?  This  does  not  include  the  amounts  loaned  by 
state,  private,  and  savings  banks.  Add  to  this  the 


THE  PLIGHT  OF  THE  FARMER         109 

billions  of  dollars  of  other  loans  and  think  if  it  is  any 
wonder  times  are  hard.  Will  the  American  people 
never  wake  up  to  the  fact  that  they  are  being  pauper- 
ized? Four  people  are  paying  interest  upon  each  dol- 
lar you  have  in  your  pocket  —  if  you  have  any.  Wake 
up !  Wake  up ! 

Whatever  the  ultimate  effects  of  an  inflated  and 
consequently  depreciated  currency  might  be,  the 
debtor  class,  to  which  a  large  portion  of  the  West- 
ern farmers  belonged,  would  obviously  benefit  im- 
mediately by  the  injection  of  large  quantities  of 
money  into  the  circulating  medium.  The  pur- 
chasing power  of  money  would  be  lower;  hence  the 
farmer  would  receive  more  in  dollars  and  cents  and 
would  be  in  a  better  position  to  pay  his  standing 
debts.  Whether  or  not  the  rise  in  the  prices  of  his 
products  would  be  offset  or  more  than  offset  by  the 
increased  prices  which  he  would  have  to  pay  for  the 
things  he  purchased  would  depend  upon  the  rela- 
tive rate  at  which  different  commodities  adjusted 
themselves  to  the  new  scale  of  money  value.  In 
the  end,  of  course,  other  things  being  equal,  there 
would  be  a  return  of  old  conditions;  but  the  farmers 
did  not  look  so  far  ahead.  Hence  it  was  that  less 
attention  was  paid  to  taxation,  to  railroad  rates 
and  discriminations,  to  elevator  companies,  to 


110  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

grain  gamblers,  or  to  corporations  as  such;  and  the 
main  force  of  the  agrarian  movements  from  1875 
onward  was  exerted,  first  for  an  increased  paper 
currency  and  then  for  free  silver. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  FARMERS'  ALLIANCE 

THE  hope  of  welding  the  farmers  into  an  organiza- 
tion which  would  enable  them  to  present  a  united 
front  to  their  enemies  and  to  work  together  for  the 
promotion  of  their  interests  —  social,  economic, 
and  political  —  was  too  alluring  to  be  allowed  to 
die  out  with  the  decline  of  the  Patrons  of  Husband- 
ry. Farmers  who  had  experienced  the  benefits  of 
the  Grange,  even  though  they  had  deserted  it  in  its 
hour  of  trial,  were  easily  induced  to  join  another  or- 
ganization embodying  all  its  essential  features  but 
proposing  to  avoid  its  mistakes.  The  conditions 
which  brought  about  the  rapid  spread  of  the  Grange 
in  the  seventies  still  prevailed;  and  as  soon  as  the 
reaction  from  the  Granger  movement  was  spent, 
orders  of  farmers  began  to  appear  in  various  places 
and  to  spread  rapidly  throughout  the  South  and 
West.  This  second  movement  for  agricultural  or- 
ganization differed  from  the  first  in  that  it  sprang 

ill 


112  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

from  the  soil,  as  it  were,  and,  like  Topsy,  "just 
growed  "  instead  of  being  deliberately  planned  and 
put  into  operation  by  a  group  of  founders. 

A  local  farmers'  club  or  alliance  was  organized  in 
1874  or  1875  in  the  frontier  county  of  Lampasas, 
Texas,  for  mutual  protection  against  horse  thieves 
and  land  sharks  and  for  cooperation  in  the  round- 
ing up  of  strayed  stock  and  in  the  purchase  of  sup- 
plies. That  it  might  accomplish  its  purposes  more 
effectively,  the  club  adopted  a  secret  ritual  of  three 
degrees;  and  it  is  said  that  at  first  this  contained 
a  formula  for  catching  horse  thieves.  Affiliated 
lodges  were  soon  established  in  neighboring  com- 
munities, and  in  1878  a  Grand  State  Alliance  was 
organized.  Some  one  connected  with  this  move- 
ment must  have  been  familiar  with  the  Grange,  for 
the  Declaration  of  Purposes  adopted  by  the  State 
Alliance  in  1880  is  but  a  crude  paraphrase  of  the 
declaration  adopted  by  the  earlier  order  at  St.  Louis 
in  1874.  These  promising  beginnings  were  quickly 
wrecked  by  political  dissension,  particularly  in  con- 
nection with  the  Greenback  movement,  and  the 
first  State  Alliance  held  its  last  meeting  in  1879. 
In  that  year,  however,  a  member  of  the  order  who 
removed  to  Poolville  in  Parker  County,  Texas,  or- 
ganized there  a  distinctly  non-partisan  alliance. 


THE  FARMERS'  ALLIANCE  113 

From  this  new  center  the  movement  spread  more 
rapidly;  a  second  Grand  State  Alliance  was  organ- 
ized; and  the  order  grew  with  such  rapidity  that 
by  1886  there  were  nearly  three  thousand  local 
lodges  in  the  State.  The  social  aspect  was  prom- 
inent in  the  Alliance  movement  in  Texas  from  the 
beginning.  Women  were  admitted  to  full  mem- 
bership, and  negroes  were  excluded.  In  1882  the 
three  degrees  of  the  ritual  were  combined  into  one 
so  that  all  members  might  be  on  the  same  footing. 
The  early  minutes  of  the  State  Alliance  indicate 
that  the  rounding  up  of  estrays  was  the  most  im- 
portant practical  feature  of  the  order  at  that  time, 
but  in  a  few  years  this  was  overshadowed  by  co- 
operation. Trade  agreements  were  made  with 
dealers,  joint  stock  stores  and  Alliance  cotton- 
yards  were  established,  and  finally  a  state  exchange 
was  organized  with  a  nominal  capital  of  half  a  mil- 
lion dollars  to  handle  the  business  of  the  members. 
All  the  difficulties  which  the  Grange  had  encoun- 
tered in  its  attempts  at  cooperation  beset  the  Alli- 
ance ventures :  dissension  was  spread  by  merchants 
and  commission  men  fighting  for  their  livelihood; 
mistakes  were  made  by  agents  and  directors;  too 
much  was  attempted  at  once;  and  in  a  few  years 
the  house  of  cards  tumbled  to  the  ground. 


114 

While  its  business  ventures  were  still  promising, 
the  Texas  Alliance  came  near  being  wrecked  once 
more  on  the  shoals  of  politics.  The  state  meeting 
in  August,  1886,  adopted  an  elaborate  set  of  "De- 
mands," which  included  higher  taxation  of  lands 
held  for  speculative  purposes,  prohibition  of  alien 
land  ownership,  laws  to  "prevent  the  dealing  in 
futures  of  all  agricultural  products, "  full  taxation 
of  railroad  property,  "the  rapid  extinguishment  of 
the  public  debt  of  the  United  States,  by  operating 
the  mints  to  their  fullest  capacity  in  coining  silver 
and  gold,  and  the  tendering  of  the  same  without 
discrimination  to  the  public  creditors,"  the  issue  of 
legal  tender  notes  on  a  per  capita  basis  and  their 
substitution  for  bank  notes,  a  national  bureau  of 
labor  statistics,  an  interstate  commerce  law,  and 
the  abolition  of  the  contract  system  of  employing 
convicts.  Provision  was  made  for  a  committee  of 
three  to  press  these  demands  upon  Congress  and 
the  State  Legislature.  At  the  close  of  the  meeting, 
some  of  the  members,  fearing  that  the  adoption  of 
this  report  would  lead  to  an  attempt  to  establish 
a  new  political  party,  held  another  meeting  and 
organized  a  rival  State  Alliance. 

Considerable  confusion  prevailed  for  a  few 
months;  the  president  and  vice-president  of  the 


THE  FARMERS'  ALLIANCE  115 

regular  State  Alliance  resigned,  and  the  whole  order 
seemed  on  the  verge  of  disruption.  At  this  point 
there  appeared  on  the  stage  the  man  who  was  des- 
tined not  only  to  save  the  Alliance  in  Texas  but  also 
to  take  the  lead  in  making  it  a  national  organiza- 
tion —  C.  W.  Macune,  the  chairman  of  the  execu- 
tive committee.  Assuming  the  position  of  acting 
president,  Macune  called  a  special  session  of  the 
State  Alliance  to  meet  in  January,  1887.  At  this 
meeting  the  constitution  was  amended  to  include 
a  declaration  that  it  was  the  purpose  of  the  order 
"to  labor  for  the  education  of  the  agricultural 
classes  in  the  science  of  economical  government,  in 
a  strictly  nonpartisan  spirit";  and  attention  was 
then  directed  to  a  plan  for  "the  organization  of  the 
cotton  belt  of  America."  The  first  step  in  this 
direction  was  taken  in  the  same  month  when 
the  Texas  Alliance  joined  with  the  Farmers'  Union 
of  Louisiana  and  formed  the  National  Farmers' 
Alliance  and  Cooperative  Union  of  America. * 
Macune,  who  was  elected  president  of  the 

1  The  Farmers'  Union  was  the  outgrowth  of  an  open  farmers'  club 
organized  in  Lincoln  Parish,  Louisiana,  in  1880.  In  1885  this  was 
transformed  into  a  secret  society  with  a  ritual  modeled  after  that  of 
the  Grange  and  with  a  constitution  adapted  from  the  constitution 
used  by  the  Texas  alliances.  Before  the  year  was  over  the  order 
spread  into  the  adjoining  parishes  and  a  state  union  was  established. 


116  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

national  body,  at  once  sent  organizers  into  most  of 
the  Southern  States;  and  local  alliances,  followed 
rapidly  by  state  organization,  appeared  in  State 
after  State.  When  the  next  meeting  was  held  in 
October,  1887,  delegates  were  present  from  nine 
Southern  States.1  The  "Demands"  adopted  at 
this  meeting  were  very  like  those  which  had  split 
the  Texas  Alliance  in  the  preceding  year,  with  the 
addition  of  sections  calling  for  the  reduction  of  the 
tariff  to  a  revenue  basis,  a  graduated  income  tax, 
promotion  of  industrial  and  agricultural  education, 
restriction  of  immigration,  and  popular  election  of 
United  States  senators. 

As  the  Alliance  spread  into  Arkansas  and  some  of 
the  adjoining  States,  it  encountered  another  farm- 
ers' association  of  a  very  similar  character  and  pur- 
pose. The  Agricultural  Wheel,  as  it  was  known, 
originated  in  a  local  club  in  Prairie  County,  Arkan- 
sas, in  1882,  and  soon  expanded  into  a  state- wide 
organization.  After  amalgamating  with  another 
agricultural  order,  known  as  the  Brothers  of  Free- 
dom, the  Wheel  began  to  roll  into  the  adjoining 
States.  In  1886  delegates  from  Tennessee  and 

1  By  December,  1888,  it  was  claimed  that  there  were  10,000  alli- 
ances in  16  States  with  a  total  membership  of  about  400,000.  It  was 
evident  that  the  organization  of  the  fanners  of  the  cotton  belt  was 
rapidly  being  consummated. 


THE  FARMERS'  ALLIANCE  117 

Kentucky  attended  the  meeting  of  the  Arkansas 
State  Wheel  and  took  part  in  the  organization  of 
the  National  Agricultural  Wheel.1  When  the  Na- 
tional Wheel  held  its  first  annual  meeting  in  No- 
vember, 1887,  eight  state  organizations  had  been 
established,  all  in  the  Southwest,  with  a  total  mem- 
bership of  half  a  million. 

With  two  great  orders  of  farmers  expanding  in 
much  the  same  territory  and  having  practically 
identical  objects,  the  desirability  of  union  was  ob- 
vious. The  subject  was  discussed  at  meetings  of 
both  bodies,  and  committees  of  conference  were 
appointed.  Both  organizations  finally  convened 
in  December,  1888,  at  Meridian,  Mississippi,  and 
appointed  a  joint  committee  to  work  out  the  de- 
tails of  amalgamation.  The  outcome  was  a  new  con- 
stitution, which  was  accepted  by  each  body  acting 
separately  and  was  finally  ratified  by  the  state  or- 
ganizations. The  combined  order  was  to  be  known 
as  the  Farmers'  and  Laborers'  Union  of  America. 

While  this  development  had  been  going  on  in  the 
South,  another  movement,  somewhat  different  in 
character  and  quite  independent  in  origin,  had  been 

1  Some  difficulty  was  occasioned  at  this  meeting  by  the  question  of 
admitting  negroes  to  the  order,  but  this  was  finally  settled  by  making 
provision  for  separate  lodges  for  colored  members. 


118  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

launched  by  the  farmers  of  the  Northwest.  The 
founder  of  the  National  Farmers'  Alliance,  or  the 
Northwestern  Alliance,  as  it  was  called  to  distin- 
guish it  from  the  Southern  organization,  was  Mil- 
ton George,  editor  of  the  Western  Rural  of  Chicago, 
who  had  been  instrumental  in  organizing  a  local 
alliance  in  Cook  County.  This  Alliance  began  issu- 
ing charters  to  other  locals,  and  in  October,  at  the 
close  of  a  convention  in  Chicago  attended  by  about 
"five  hundred,  representing  alliances,  granges, 
farmers'  clubs,  etc., "  a  national  organization  was 
formed.  The  constitution  adopted  at  this  time  de- 
clared the  object  of  the  order  to  be  "to  unite  the 
farmers  of  the  United  States  for  their  protection 
against  class  legislation,  and  the  encroachments  of 
concentrated  capital  and  the  tyranny  of  monopoly; 
...  to  oppose,  in  our  respective  political  parties, 
the  election  of  any  candidate  to  office,  state  or  na- 
tional, who  is  not  thoroughly  in  sympathy  with  the 
farmers'  interests;  to  demand  that  the  existing  po- 
litical parties  shall  nominate  farmers,  or  those  who 
are  in  sympathy  with  them,  for  all  offices  within 
the  gift  of  the  people,  and  to  do  everything  in  a 
legitimate  manner  that  may  serve  to  benefit  the 
producer."  The  specific  measures  for  which  the 
promoters  of  the  Northwestern  Alliance  intended 


THE  FARMERS'  ALLIANCE  119 

to  work  were  set  forth  in  a  platform  adopted  at  the 
second  annual  meeting  in  Chicago,  October  5, 1881, 
which  demanded:  equal  taxation  of  all  property, 
including  deduction  of  the  amount  of  mortgages 
from  assessments  of  mortgaged  property;  "a  just 
income  tax";  reduction  of  salaries  of  officials  and 
their  election  instead  of  appointment,  so  far  as 
practicable;  regulation  of  interstate  commerce;  re- 
form of  the  patent  laws;  and  prevention  of  the 
adulteration  of  food.  "The  combination  and  con- 
solidation of  railroad  capital  ...  in  the  main- 
tenance of  an  oppressive  and  tyrannical  transpor- 
tation system"  was  particularly  denounced,  and 
the  farmers  of  the  country  were  called  upon  to  or- 
ganize "for  systematic  and  persistent  action"  for 
"the  emancipation  of  the  people  from  this  terrible 
oppression." 

The  Northwestern  Alliance  did  not  attempt  co- 
operation in  business  so  extensively  as  did  its 
Southern  contemporaries,  but  a  number  of  Alliance 
grain  elevators  were  established  in  Minnesota  and 
Dakota,  cooperative  creameries  flourished  in  Illi- 
nois, and  many  of  the  alliances  appointed  agents  to 
handle  produce  and  purchase  supplies  for  the  mem- 
bers. It  was  in  the  field  of  politics,  however,  that 
the  activity  of  the  order  was  most  notable.  The 


120  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

methods  by  which  the  farmers  of  the  Northwest  at- 
tempted to  use  their  organizations  for  political  ends 
are  well  illustrated  by  the  resolutions  adopted  at 
the  annual  meeting  of  the  Minnesota  State  Alliance 
in  1886  which  declared  that  "the  Alliance,  while 
not  a  partisan  association,  is  political  in  the  sense 
that  it  seeks  to  correct  the  evils  of  misgovernment 
through  the  ballot-box,"  and  called  upon  all  the 
producers  of  the  State  "to  unite  with  us  at  the 
ballot-box  next  November  to  secure  a  legislature 
that  will  work  in  the  interests  of  the  many  against 
the  exactions  of  the  few."  The  specific  demands 
included  state  regulation  of  railroads,  free  coinage 
of  silver,  reduction  of  the  tariff  to  a  revenue  basis, 
revision  of  the  patent  laws,  high  taxation  of  oleo- 
margarine, and  reduction  of  the  legal  rate  of  inter- 
est from  10  to  8  per  cent.  The  secretary  was  di- 
rected to  forward  copies  of  these  resolutions  to  fed- 
eral and  state  officers  and  to  the  delegation  of  the 
State  in  Congress;  and  the  members  of  local  al- 
liances were  "urged  to  submit  this  platform  of 
principles  to  every  candidate  for  the  legislature  in 
their  respective  districts,  and  to  vote  as  a  unit 
against  every  man  who  refuses  to  publicly  sub- 
scribe his  name  to  the  same  and  pledge  himself,  if 
elected,  to  live  up  to  it." 


THE  FARMERS'  ALLIANCE  121 

The  resolutions  adopted  by  the  National  Alli- 
ance in  1887  show  that  the  political  purposes  of  the 
order  had  become  considerably  more  comprehen- 
sive than  they  were  when  it  was  getting  under  way 
in  1881.  First  place  was  now  given  to  a  plank 
favoring  the  free  coinage  of  silver  and  the  issuance 
of  "all  paper  money  direct  to  the  people."  The 
demand  for  railroad  regulation  was  accompanied 
by  a  statement  that  "the  ultimate  solution  of  the 
transportation  problem  may  be  found  in  the  owner- 
ship and  operation  by  the  Government  of  one  or 
more  transcontinental  lines";  and  the  immediate 
acquisition  of  the  Union  Pacific,  then  in  finan- 
cial difficulties,  was  suggested.  Other  resolutions 
called  for  government  ownership  and  operation  of 
the  telegraph,  improvement  of  waterways,  restric- 
tion of  the  liquor  traffic,  industrial  education  in  the 
public  schools,  restoration  of  agricultural  colleges 
"to  the  high  purpose  of  their  creation,"  and  popu- 
lar election  of  Senators.  The  national  body  does 
not  appear  to  have  attempted,  at  this  time,  to  force 
its  platform  upon  candidates  for  office;  but  it  urged 
"farmers  throughout  the  country  to  aid  in  the  work 
of  immediate  organization,  that  we  may  act  in  con- 
cert for  our  own  and  the  common  good." 

The  culmination  of  this  general  movement  for 


122  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

the  organization  of  the  farmers  of  the  country  came 
in  1889  and  1890.  The  Farmers'  and  Laborers' 
Union  and  the  Northwestern  Alliance  met  at  St. 
Louis  on  December  3,  1889.  The  meeting  of  the 
Southern  organization,  which  was  renamed  the 
National  Farmers'  Alliance  and  Industrial  Union, 
was  attended  by  about  a  hundred  delegates  repre- 
senting Indiana,  Kansas,  and  every  Southern  State 
from  Maryland  to  Texas,  with  the  exception  of 
West  Virginia.  The  purpose  of  the  two  orders  in 
holding  their  meetings  at  the  same  time  and  place 
was  obviously  to  effect  some  sort  of  union,  and 
committees  of  conference  were  at  once  appointed. 
Difficulties  soon  confronted  these  committees:  the 
Southern  Alliance  wanted  to  effect  a  complete 
merger  but  insisted  upon  retention  of  the  secret 
features  and  the  exclusion  of  negroes,  at  least  from 
the  national  body;  the  Northwestern  Alliance 
preferred  a  federation  in  which  each  organiza- 
tion might  retain  its  identity.  Arrangements  were 
finally  made  for  future  conferences  to  effect  federa- 
tion but  nothing  came  of  them.  The  real  obstacles 
seem  to  have  been  differences  of  policy  with  refer- 
ence to  political  activity  and  a  survival  of  sectional 
feeling. 

With  the  failure  of  the  movement  for  union,  the 


THE  FARMERS'  ALLIANCE  123 

Southern  Alliance  began  active  work  in  the  North- 
ern States;  and  when  the  Supreme  Council,  as  the 
national  body  was  now  called,  held  its  next  meeting 
at  Ocala,  Florida,  in  December,  1890,  delegates 
were  present  from  state  alliances  of  seven  Northern 
and  Western  States,  in  addition  to  those  repre- 
sented at  the  St.  Louis  meeting.  The  Farmers' 
Mutual  Benefit  Association,  a  secret  order  with 
about  two  hundred  thousand  members,  had  a  com- 
mittee in  attendance  at  this  meeting,  and  the  Col- 
ored Farmers'  Alliance,  which  had  been  founded  in 
Texas  in  1886  and  claimed  a  membership  of  over  a 
million,  held  its  national  meeting  at  the  same  time 
and  place.  Plans  were  formulated  for  a  federation 
of  these  three  bodies,  and  of  such  other  farmers' 
and  laborers'  associations  as  might  join  with  them, 
to  the  end  that  all  might  work  unitedly  for  legisla- 
tion in  the  interests  of  the  industrial  classes. 

Signs  of  approaching  dissolution  of  the  Alliance 
movement  were  already  apparent  at  the  Ocala 
meeting.  The  finances  of  the  Southern  Alliance 
had  been  so  badly  managed  that  there  was  a  deficit 
of  about  $6000  in  the  treasury  of  the  Supreme 
Council.  This  was  due  in  part  to  reckless  expendi- 
ture and  in  part  to  difficulties  in  collecting  dues 
from  the  state  organizations.  Discord  had  arisen, 


124  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

moreover,  from  the  political  campaign  of  1890,  and 
an  investigating  committee  expressed  its  disap- 
proval of  the  actions  of  the  officers  in  connection 
with  a  senatorial  contest  in  Georgia.  The  decline 
of  the  Southern  Alliance  after  1890  was  even  more 
rapid  than  that  of  the  Grange  had  been.  The 
failure  of  many  of  the  cooperative  ventures  con- 
tributed to  this  decline;  but  complications  and  dis- 
sensions resulting  from  the  establishment  of  a  new 
political  party  which  took  over  the  Alliance  plat- 
form, were  principally  responsible.  The  North- 
western Alliance  continued  for  a  few  years,  prac- 
tically as  an  adjunct  to  the  new  party  but  it,  too, 
lost  rapidly  in  membership  and  influence.  With 
the  year  1890  interest  shifts  from  social  to  political 
organization,  from  Alliances  to  Populism. 


CHAPTER   IX 

THE  PEOPLE'S  PARTY  LAUNCHED 

ALLIANCES,  wheels,  leagues  —  all  the  agrarian  or- 
ganizations which  multiplied  during  the  eighties  — 
gave  tangible  form  to  the  underlying  unrest  created 
by  the  economic  conditions  of  that  superficially 
prosperous  decade.  Only  slowly,  however,  did 
there  develop  a  feeling  that  a  new  political  par- 
ty was  necessary  in  order  to  apply  the  remedies 
which,  it  was  believed,  would  cure  some  if  not 
all  the  ills  of  the  agricultural  class.  Old  party 
ties  were  still  strong.  Only  with  reluctance  could 
the  Republican  or  Democrat  of  long  standing 
bring  himself  to  depart  from  the  familiar  fold. 
Then,  too,  the  recent  ignominious  failures  of  the 
Greenback  party  might  well  cool  the  ardor  of  all 
but  the  most  sanguine  advocates  of  a  third  par- 
ty movement.  Among  the  leaders  of  the  agra- 
rian organizations  were  many,  moreover,  who  fore- 
saw that  to  become  involved  in  partisan  politics 

125 


126  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

could  mean  nothing  less  than  the  defeat  of  all 
their  original  purposes. 

One  disappointment  after  another,  however, 
made  it  apparent  that  little  was  to  be  expected 
from  the  Republican  or  the  Democratic  party. 
Trust  in  individual  politicians  proved  equally  vain, 
since  promises  easily  made  during  a  hot  campaign 
were  as  easily  forgotten  after  the  battle  was  over. 
One  speaker  before  a  state  convention  of  the  North- 
west Alliance  put  into  words  what  many  were 
thinking:  "There  may  be  some  contingencies 
when  you  may  have  to  act  politically.  If  other 
parties  will  not  nominate  men  friendly  to  your  in- 
terest, then  your  influence  will  have  to  be  felt  in 
some  way  or  you  may  as  well  disband.  If  all  par- 
ties nominate  your  enemies,  then  put  some  of  your 
own  friends  into  the  race  and  then  stand  by  them 
as  a  Christian  stands  by  his  religion."  In  other 
words,  if  nothing  was  to  be  gained  by  scattering 
votes  among  the  candidates  of  the  old  parties,  in- 
dependent action  remained  the  only  course.  Hence 
it  was  that  the  late  eighties  saw  the  beginnings  of 
another  party  of  protest,  dominated  by  the  farm- 
ers and  so  formidable  as  to  cause  the  machine  poli- 
ticians to  realize  that  a  new  force  was  abroad  in 
the  land. 


HENRY  GEORGE 
Photograph  by  Gutekunst,  Philadelphia. 


THE  AGB  )E 

could  mean  nothi*  eieat  c 

their  original  p- 

One   disapi  ufter   a  >  /ever, 

made  it  a:  t  little  \va.-  xpected 

from  f  or  the  De  ;rty. 

Tr  t  politicians  proved  equally  vain, 

y  made  during  a  hot  campaign 

•  easily  forgotten  after  the  battle  was  o 

ore  a  state  convention  of  the  North- 

^^M*™^1  many 

thinking:  iv    be   some   contingencies 

.«idql9b«uin  ,}>-.nnJ3tuD  -^d  dqaisolorfS 

wl"  have  to  act  politically.     If  other 

par  nominate  men  friendly  to  your  in- 

terest, then  your  influence  will  have  to  be  felt  in 
some  way  or  you  may  as  well  disband.  If  all  par- 
ties nominate  your  enemies,  then  put  some  of  your 
own  friends  inf.o  the  race  and  then  stand  by  them 
as  a  Christian  stai  In  other 

words,  if  nothing  wa&  tttering 

votes  among  the  c-andidat  aid  parties,  in- 

dependent action  rt  course.    Hence 

it  was  that  the  late  eighties  saw  the  beginnings  of 
another  party  of  protest,  dominated  by  the  farm- 
ers and  so  formidable  as  to  cause  the  machine  poli- 
ticians to  realize  that  <<  was  abroad  in 
the  land. 


THE  PEOPLE'S  PARTY  LAUNCHED      127 

After  the  Greenback  party  lost  the  place  it  had 
for  a  fleeting  moment  obtained,  labor  once  more 
essayed  the  r6le  of  a  third  party.  In  1886,  for  in- 
stance, the  Knights  of  Labor  and  the  trades  unions, 
for  once  cooperating  harmoniously,  joined  forces 
locally  with  the  moribund  Greenbackers  and  with 
farmers'  organizations  and  won  notable  successes 
at  the  polls  in  various  parts  of  the  Union,  particu- 
larly in  the  Middle  Atlantic  and  Western  States. 
Emboldened  by  such  victories,  the  discontented 
farmers  were  induced  to  cast  in  their  lot  with  labor; 
and  for  the  next  few  years,  the  nation  saw  the  man- 
ifestoes of  a  party  which  combined  the  demands  of 
labor  and  agriculture  in  platforms  constructed  not 
unlike  a  crazy-quilt,  with  Henry  George,  James 
Buchanan,  and  Alson  J.  Streeter  presiding  at  the 
sewing-bee  and  attempting  to  fit  into  the  patch- 
work the  diverse  and  frequently  clashing  shades  of 
opinion  represented  in  the  party.  In  1888,  Street- 
er, ex-president  of  the  Northwestern  Alliance,  was 
nominated  for  President  on  the  Union  Labor  ticket 
and  received  146,935  votes  in  27  of  the  38  States. 
Despite  its  name  and  some  support  from  the  East- 
ern workers,  the  new  party  was  predominantly 
Western:  more  than  half  of  its  total  vote  was  polled 
in  Kansas,  Texas,  Missouri,  and  Arkansas.  In  the 


128  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

local  elections  of  1889  and  1890  the  party  still  ap- 
peared but  was  obviously  passing  off  the  stage  to 
make  way  for  a  greater  attraction. 

The  meager  vote  for  Streeter  in  1888  demon- 
strated that  the  organized  farmers  were  yet  far 
from  accepting  the  idea  of  separate  political  action. 
President  Macune  of  the  Southern  Alliance  prob- 
ably voiced  the  sentiments  of  most  of  that  order 
when  he  said  in  his  address  to  the  delegates  at 
Shreveport  in  1887 :  "Let  the  Alliance  be  a  business 
organization  for  business  purposes,  and  as  such, 
necessarily  secret,  and  as  secret,  necessarily  non- 
political.  "*  Even  the  Northwestern  Alliance  had 
given  no  sign  of  official  approval  to  the  political 
party  in  which  so  many  of  its  own  members  played 
a  conspicuous  part. 

But  after  the  election  of  1888,  those  who  had 
continued  to  put  their  trust  in  non-political  organ- 
izations gradually  awoke  to  the  fact  that  neither 
fulminations  against  transportation  abuses,  mo- 
nopolies, and  the  protective  tariff,  nor  the  lobbying 
of  the  Southern  Alliance  in  Washington  had  pro- 
duced reforms.  Even  Macune  was  moved  to  say  at 

1  At  the  next  annual  meeting,  in  December,  1888,  no  change  in 
policy  was  enunciated:  the  plan  for  a  national  organ,  unanimously 
adopted  by  the  Alliance,  provided  that  it  should  be  "strictly  non-par- 
tisan in  politics  and  non-sectarian  in  religion." 


THE  PEOPLE'S  PARTY  LAUNCHED     129 

the  St.  Louis  session  in  December,  1889:  "We have 
reached  a  period  in  the  history  of  our  Government 
when  confidence  in  our  political  leaders  and  great 
political  organizations  is  almost  destroyed,  and  es- 
trangement between  them  and  the  people  is  becom- 
ing more  manifest  every  day."  Yet  the  formation  of 
a  new  party  under  the  auspices  of  the  Alliance  was 
probably  not  contemplated  at  this  time,  except 
possibly  as  a  last  resort,  for  the  Alliance  agreed  to 
"support  for  office  only  such  men  as  can  be  de- 
pended upon  to  enact  these  principles  into  statute 
laws,  uninfluenced  by  party  caucus."  Althougn 
the  demands  framed  at  this  St.  Louis  convention 
read  like  a  party  platform  and,  indeed,  became  the 
basis  of  the  platform  of  the  People's  Party  in  1892, 
they  were  little  more  than  a  restatement  of  earli- 
er programs  put  forth  by  the  Alliance  and  the 
Wheel.  They  called  for  the  substitution  of  green- 
backs for  national  bank  notes,  laws  to  "prevent  the 
dealing  in  futures  of  all  agricultural  and  mechanical 
productions,"  free  and  unlimited  coinage  of  silver, 
prohibition  of  alien  ownership  of  land,  reclamation 
from  the  railroads  of  lands  held  by  them  in  excess 
of  actual  needs,  reduction  and  equalization  of  taxa- 
tion, the  issue  of  fractional  paper  currency  for  use 
in  the  mails,  and,  finally,  government  ownership 


130  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

and  operation  of  the  means  of  communication  and 
transportation. 

The  real  contribution  which  this  meeting  made 
to  the  agrarian  movement  was  contained  in  the  re- 
port of  the  committee  on  the  monetary  system,  of 
which  C.  W.  Macune  was  chairman.  This  was  the 
famous  sub-treasury  scheme,  soon  to  become  the 
paramount  issue  with  the  Alliance  and  the  Popu- 
lists in  the  South  and  in  some  parts  of  the  West. 
The  committee  proposed  "that  the  system  of  using 
certain  banks  as  United  States  depositories  be  abol- 
ished, and  in  place  of  said  system,  establish  in  every 
county  in  each  of  the  States  that  offers  for  sale  dur- 
ing the  one  year  $500,000  worth  of  farm  products 
—  including  wheat,  corn,  oats,  barley,  rye,  rice, 
tobacco,  cotton,  wool,  and  sugar,  all  together  — 
a  sub-treasury  office."  In  connection  with  this 
office  there  were  to  be  warehouses  or  elevators  in 
which  the  farmers  might  deposit  their  crops,  receiv- 
ing a  certificate  of  the  deposit  showing  the  amount 
and  quality,  and  a  loan  of  United  States  legal  tender 
paper  equal  to  eighty  per  cent  of  the  local  current 
value  of  the  products  deposited.  The  interest  on 
this  loan  was  to  be  at  the  rate  of  one  per  cent  per 
annum;  and  the  farmer,  or  the  person  to  whom  he 
might  sell  his  certificate,  was  to  be  allowed  one  year 


THE  PEOPLE'S  PARTY  LAUNCHED     131 

in  which  to  redeem  the  property;  otherwise  it 
would  be  sold  at  public  auction  for  the  satisfaction 
of  the  debt.  This  project  was  expected  to  benefit 
the  farmers  in  two  ways:  it  would  increase  and 
make  flexible  the  volume  of  currency  in  circulation; 
and  it  would  enable  them  to  hold  their  crops  in 
anticipation  of  a  rise  in  price. 

The  Northwestern  Alliance  also  hesitated  to 
play  the  role  of  a  third  party,  but  it  adopted  a  pro- 
gram which  was  virtually  a  party  platform.  In 
place  of  the  sub-treasury  scheme  as  a  means  of  in- 
creasing the  volume  of  currency  in  circulation  and 
at  the  same  time  enabling  the  farmer  to  borrow 
money  at  low  rates  of  interest,  this  organization 
favored  the  establishment  of  a  land  loan  bureau 
operated  by  the  Government.  Legal  tender  curren- 
cy to  the  amount  of  $100,000,000  or  more  if  neces- 
sary, was  to  be  placed  at  the  disposal  of  this  bureau 
for  loans  upon  the  security  of  agricultural  land  in 
amounts  not  to  exceed  one-half  the  value  of  the  land 
and  at  an  interest  rate  of  two  per  cent  per  annum. 
These  loans  might  run  for  twenty  years  but  were  to 
be  payable  at  any  time  at  the  option  of  the  borrower. 

With  two  strong  organizations  assuming  all  the 
functions  of  political  parties,  except  the  nomina- 
tion of  candidates,  the  stage  was  set  in  1890  for  a 


132  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

drama  of  unusual  interest.  One  scene  was  laid  in 
Washington,  where  in  the  House  and  Senate  and  in 
the  lobbies  the  sub-treasury  scheme  was  aired  and 
argued.  Lending  their  strength  to  the  men  from 
the  mining  States,  the  Alliance  men  aided  the  pas- 
sage of  the  Silver  Purchase  Act,  the  nearest  ap- 
proach to  free  silver  which  Congress  could  be  in- 
duced to  make.  By  the  familiar  practice  of  "log- 
rolling, "  the  silverites  prevented  the  passage  of  the 
McKinley  tariff  bill  until  the  manufacturers  of  the 
East  were  willing  to  yield  in  part  their  objections 
to  silver  legislation.  But  both  the  tariff  and  the 
silver  bill  seemed  to  the  angry  farmers  of  the  West 
mere  bones  thrown  to  the  dog  under  the  table. 
They  had  demanded  free  silver  and  had  secured  a 
mere  increase  in  the  amount  to  be  purchased;  they 
had  called  for  a  downward  revision  of  the  duties 
upon  manufactured  products  and  had  been  given 
more  or  less  meaningless  "protection  "  of  then*  farm 
produce;  they  had  insisted  upon  adequate  control 
of  the  trusts  and  had  been  presented  with  the  Sher- 
man Act,  a  law  which  might  or  might  not  curb  the 
monopolies  under  which  they  believed  themselves 
crushed.  All  the  unrest  which  had  been  gathering 
during  the  previous  decade,  all  the  venom  which 
had  been  distilled  by  fourteen  cent  corn  and  ten 


THE  PEOPLE'S  PARTY  LAUNCHED      133 

per  cent  interest,  all  the  blind  striving  to  frustrate 
the  industrial  consolidation  which  the  farmer  did 
not  understand  but  feared  and  hated,  found  expres- 
sion in  the  political  campaign  of  1890. 

The  Alliance  suited  its  political  activities  to  local 
necessities.  In  many  of  the  Southern  States,  no- 
tably Florida,  Georgia,  and  the  Carolinas,  Alliance 
men  took  possession  of  the  Democratic  conventions 
and  forced  both  the  incorporation  of  their  demands 
into  the  platforms  and  the  nomination  of  candi- 
dates who  agreed  to  support  those  demands.  The 
result  was  the  control  of  the  legislatures  of  five 
Southern  States  by  members  or  supporters  of  the 
order  and  the  election  of  three  governors,  one 
United  States  Senator,  and  forty-four  Congress- 
men who  championed  the  principles  of  the  Alliance. 
In  the  West  the  Alliance  worked  by  itself  and,  in- 
stead of  dominating  an  old  party,  created  a  new 
one.  It  is  true  that  the  order  did  not  formally  be- 
come a  political  party;  but  its  officers  took  the  lead 
in  organizing  People's,  Independent,  or  Industrial 
parties  in  the  different  States,  the  membership  of 
which  was  nearly  identical  with  that  of  the  Alli- 
ance. Nor  was  the  farmer  alone  in  his  efforts. 
Throughout  the  whole  country  the  prices  of  manu- 
factured articles  had  suddenly  risen,  and  popular 


134  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

opinion,  fastening  upon  the  McKinley  tariff  as  the 
cause,  manifested  itself  in  a  widespread  desire  to 
punish  the  Republican  party. 

The  events  of  1890  constituted  not  only  a  politi- 
cal revolt  but  a  social  upheaval  in  the  West.  No- 
where was  the  overturn  more  complete  than  in 
Kansas.  If  the  West  in  general  was  uneasy,  Kan- 
sas was  in  the  throes  of  a  mighty  convulsion;  it  was 
swept  as  by  the  combination  of  a  tornado  and  a 
prairie  fire.  As  a  sympathetic  commentator  of 
later  days  puts  it,  "It  was  a  religious  revival,  a 
crusade,  a  pentecost  of  politics  in  which  a  tongue 
of  flame  sat  upon  every  man,  and  each  spake  as  the 
spirit  gave  him  utterance."1  All  over  the  State, 
meetings  were  held  in  schoolhouses,  churches,  and 
public  halls.  Alliance  picnics  were  all-day  exposi- 
tions of  the  doctrines  of  the  People's  Party.  Up 
and  down  the  State,  and  from  Kansas  City  to 
Sharon  Springs,  Mary  Elizabeth  Lease,  "Sockless" 
Jerry  Simpson,  Anna  L.  Diggs,  William  A.  Peffer, 
Cyrus  Corning,  and  twice  a  score  more,  were  in 
constant  demand  for  lectures,  while  lesser  lights  il- 
lumined the  dark  places  when  the  stars  of  the  first 
magnitude  were  scintillating  elsewhere. 

1  Elizabeth  N.  Barr,  The  Populist  Uprising,  in  William  E.  Con- 
nelly's Standard  History  of  Kansas  and  Kansans,  vol.  II,  p.  1148. 


THE  PEOPLE'S  PARTY  LAUNCHED     135 

Mrs.  Lease,  who  is  reported  to  have  made  160 
speeches  in  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1890,  was  a 
curiosity  in  American  politics.  Of  Irish  birth  and 
New  York  upbringing,  she  went  to  Kansas  and,  be- 
fore she  was  twenty  years  old,  married  Charles  L. 
Lease.  Twelve  years  later  she  was  admitted  to  the 
bar.  At  the  time  of  the  campaign  of  1890  she  was 
a  tall,  mannish-looking,  but  not  unattractive  wom- 
an of  thirty-seven  years,  the  mother  of  four  chil- 
dren. She  was  characterized  by  her  friends  as  re- 
fined, magnetic,  and  witty;  by  her  enemies  of  the 
Republican  party  as  a  hard,  unlovely  shrew.  The 
hostile  press  made  the  most  of  popular  prejudice 
against  a  woman  stump  speaker  and  attempted  by 
ridicule  and  invective  to  drive  her  from  the  stage. 
But  Mrs.  Lease  continued  to  talk.  She  it  was  who 
told  the  Kansas  farmers  that  what  they  needed  was 
to  "raise  less  corn  and  more  HELL!" 

Wall  Street  owns  the  country  [she  proclaimed].  It 
is  no  longer  a  government  of  the  people,  by  the  people, 
and  for  the  people,  but  a  government  of  Wall  Street,  by 
Wall  Street,  and  for  Wall  Street.  .  .  .  Money  rules, 
and  our  Vice-President  is  a  London  banker.  Our  laws 
are  the  output  of  a  system  that  clothes  rascals  in  robes 
and  honesty  in  rags.  The  parties  lie  to  us,  and  the 
political  speakers  mislead  us.  We  were  told  two  years 
ago  to  go  to  work  and  raise  a  big  crop  and  that  was  ail 


136  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

we  needed.  We  went  to  work  and  plowed  and  planted; 
the  rains  fell,  the  sun  shone,  nature  smiled,  and  we 
raised  the  big  crop  that  they  told  us  to;  and  what  came 
of  it?  Eight-cent  corn,  ten-cent  oats,  two-cent  beef, 
and  no  price  at  all  for  butter  and  eggs  —  that's  what 
came  of  it.  ...  The  main  question  is  the  money 
question.  .  .  .  We  want  money,  land,  and  transpor- 
tation. We  want  the  abolition  of  the  National  Banks, 
and  we  want  the  power  to  make  loans  directly  from  the 
Government.  We  want  the  accursed  foreclosure  sys- 
tem wiped  out.  Land  equal  to  a  tract  30  miles  wide 
and  90  miles  long  has  been  foreclosed  and  bought  in  by 
loan  companies  of  Kansas  in  a  year.  .  .  .  The  people 
are  at  bay,  and  the  blood-hounds  of  money  who  have 
dogged  us  thus  far  beware ! 

A  typical  feature  of  this  campaign  in  Kansas  was 
the  contest  between  Jerry  Simpson  and  Colonel 
James  R.  Hallo  well  for  a  seat  in  Congress.  Simp- 
son nicknamed  his  fastidious  opponent  "Prince 
Hal"  and  pointed  to  his  silk  stockings  as  an  evi- 
dence of  aristocracy.  Young  Victor  Murdock, 
then  a  cub  reporter,  promptly  wrote  a  story  to  the 
effect  that  Simpson  himself  wore  no  socks  at  all. 
"Sockless  Jerry,"  "Sockless  Simpson,"  and  then 
"Sockless  Socrates"  were  sobriquets  then  and 
thereafter  applied  to  the  stalwart  Populist.  Simp- 
son was  at  this  time  forty-eight  years  old,  a  man 
with  a  long,  square-jawed  face,  his  skin  tanned  by 


THE  PEOPLE'S  PARTY  LAUNCHED      137 

exposure  on  shipboard,  in  the  army,  and  on  the 
farm,  and  his  mustache  cut  in  a  straight  line  over  a 
large  straight  mouth.  He  wore  clerical  eyeglasses 
and  unclerical  clothes.  His  opponents  called  him 
clownish;  his  friends  declared  him  Lincolnesque. 
Failing  to  make  headway  against  him  by  ridicule, 
the  Republicans  arranged  a  series  of  joint  debates 
between  the  candidates;  but  the  audience  at  the 
first  meeting  was  so  obviously  partial  to  Simpson 
that  Hallowell  refused  to  meet  him  again.  The  sup- 
porters of  the  "sockless"  statesman,  though  less 
influential  and  less  prosperous  than  those  of  Hallo- 
well,  proved  more  numerous  and  triumphantly  elect- 
ed him  to  Congress.  In  Washington  he  acquitted 
himself  creditably  and  was  perhaps  disappointingly 
conventional  in  speech  and  attire. 

The  outcome  of  this  misery,  disgust,  anger,  and 
hatred  on  the  part  of  the  people  of  Kansas  focused 
by  shrewd  common  sense  and  rank  demagogism, 
was  the  election  of  five  Populist  Congressmen  and 
a  large  Populist  majority  in  the  lower  house  of 
the  state  legislature;  the  Republican  state  offi- 
cers were  elected  by  greatly  reduced  majorities. 
In  Nebraska,  the  People's  Independent  party  ob- 
tained a  majority  of  the  members  of  the  legislature 
and  reduced  the  Republican  party  to  third  place  in 


138  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

the  vote  for  governor,  the  victory  going  to  the 
Democrats  by  a  very  small  plurality.  The  South 
Dakota  Independent  party,  with  the  president  of 
the  state  Alliance  as  its  standard  bearer,  was  un- 
able to  defeat  the  Republican  candidates  for  state 
offices  but  obtained  the  balance  of  power  in  the 
legislature.  In  Indiana,  Michigan,  and  Minnesota, 
the  new  party  movement  manifested  considerable 
strength,  but,  with  the  exception  of  one  Alliance 
Congressman  from  Minnesota  and  a  number  of 
legislators,  the  fruits  of  its  activity  were  gathered 
by  the  Democrats. 

Among  the  results  of  the  new  party  movements 
in  the  Western  States  in  1890  should  be  included 
the  election  of  two  United  States  Senators,  neither 
of  whom  was  a  farmer,  although  both  were  ardent 
advocates  of  the  farmers'  cause.  In  South  Da- 
kota, where  no  one  of  the  three  parties  had  a  major- 
ity in  the  legislature,  the  Reverend  James  H.  Kyle, 
the  Independent  candidate,  was  elected  to  the 
United  State  Senate,  when,  after  thirty-nine  bal- 
lots, the  Democrats  gave  him  their  votes.  Kyle, 
who  was  only  thirty-seven  years  old  at  this  time, 
was  a  Congregational  minister,  a  graduate  of  Ober- 
lin  College  and  of  Alleghany  Theological  Seminary. 
He  had  held  pastorates  in  Colorado  and  South 


THE  PEOPLE'S  PARTY  LAUNCHED      139 

Dakota,  and  at  the  time  of  his  election  was  finan- 
cial agent  for  Yankton  College.  A  radical  Fourth 
of  July  oration  which  he  delivered  at  Aberdeen 
brought  him  into  favor  with  the  Alliance,  and  he 
was  elected  to  the  state  senate  on  the  Independent 
ticket  in  1890.  Prior  to  this  election  Kyle  had 
been  a  Republican. 

The  other  senatorial  victory  was  gained  in  Kan- 
sas, where  the  choice  fell  on  William  A.  Peffer, 
whose  long  whiskers  made  him  a  favorite  object  of 
ridicule  and  caricature  in  Eastern  papers.  He  was 
born  in  Pennsylvania  in  1831,  and  as  a  young  man 
had  gone  to  California  during  the  gold  boom.  Re- 
turning after  two  years  with  a  considerable  sum  of 
money,  he  engaged  in  farming  first  in  Indiana  and 
then  in  Missouri.  When  the  Civil  War  began,  his 
avowed  Unionist  sentiments  got  him  into  trouble; 
and  in  1862  he  moved  to  Illinois,  where  after  a  few 
months  he  enlisted  in  the  army.  At  the  close  of 
the  war  he  settled  in  Tennessee  and  began  the 
practice  of  law,  which  he  had  been  studying  at  in- 
tervals for  a  number  of  years.  He  removed  in 
1870  to  Kansas,  where  he  played  some  part  in  poli- 
tics as  a  Republican,  was  elected  to  the  state  sen- 
ate, and  served  as  a  delegate  to  the  national  con- 
vention of  1880.  After  a  number  of  newspaper 


140  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

ventures  he  became  the  editor  of  the  Kansas  Farm- 
er of  Topeka  in  1880  and  continued  in  that  position 
until  he  was  elected  to  the  United  States  Senate. 
He  was  a  member  of  the  Knights  of  Labor  and  was 
an  ardent  prohibitionist  and,  above  all,  an  advocate 
of  currency  inflation. 

After  the  elections  of  November,  1890,  came 
definite  action  in  the  direction  of  forming  a  new 
national  party.  The  Citizens'  Alliance,  a  secret 
political  organization  of  members  of  the  Southern 
Alliance,  held  a  convention  with  the  Knights  of  La- 
bor at  Cincinnati  on  May  19,  1891.  By  that  time 
the  tide  of  sentiment  in  favor  of  a  new  party  was 
running  strong.  Some  fourteen  hundred  delegates, 
a  majority  of  whom  were  from  the  five  States  of 
Ohio,  Kansas,  Indiana,  Illinois,  and  Nebraska,  at- 
tended the  convention  and  provided  for  a  commit- 
tee to  make  arrangements,  in  conjunction  with 
other  reform  organizations  if  possible,  for  a  con- 
vention of  the  party  to  nominate  candidates  for  the 
presidential  election  of  1892.  To  those  who  were 
anxious  to  have  something  done  immediately  the 
process  of  preparing  the  ground  for  a  new  third 
party  seemed  long  and  laborious.  Seen  in  its 
proper  perspective,  the  movement  now  appears  to 
have  been  as  swift  as  it  was  inevitable.  Once 


THE  PEOPLE'S  PARTY  LAUNCHED     141 

more,  and  with  greater  unanimity  than  ever  before, 
the  farmers,  especially  in  the  West,  threw  aside 
their  old  party  allegiance  to  fight  for  the  things 
which  they  deemed  not  only  essential  to  their  own 
welfare  but  beneficial  to  the  whole  country.  Some 
aid,  it  is  true,  was  brought  by  labor,  some  by  the 
mining  communities  of  the  mountain  region,  some 
by  various  reform  organizations;  but  the  movement 
as  a  whole  was  distinctly  and  essentially  agrarian. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE   POPULIST   BOMBSHELL   OF   1892 

THE  advent  of  the  Populists  as  a  full-fledged  party 
in  the  domain  of  national  politics  took  place  at 
Omaha  in  July,  1892.  Nearly  thirteen  hundred 
delegates  from  all  parts  of  the  Union  flocked  to 
the  convention  to  take  part  in  the  selection  of 
candidates  for  President  and  Vice-President  and 
to  adopt  a  platform  for  the  new  party.  The  "De- 
mands" of  the  Alliances  supplied  the  material 
from  which  was  constructed  a  platform  character- 
ized by  one  unsympathetic  observer  as  "that  fu- 
rious and  hysterical  arraignment  of  the  present 
times,  that  incoherent  intermingling  of  Jeremiah 
and  Bellamy. "  The  document  opened  with  a  gen- 
eral condemnation  of  national  conditions  and  a  bit- 
ter denunciation  of  the  old  parties  for  permitting 
"the  existing  dreadful  conditions  to  develop  with- 
out serious  effort  to  prevent  or  restrain  them.*' 
Then  followed  three  declarations:  "that  the  union 

142 


THE  POPULIST  BOMBSHELL  OF  1892    143 

of  the  labor  forces  of  the  United  States  this  day 
consummated  shall  be  permanent  and  perpetual"; 
that  "wealth  belongs  to  him  who  creates  it,  and 
every  dollar  taken  from  industry  without  an  equiv- 
alent is  robbery";  and  "that  the  time  has  come 
when  the  railroad  corporations  will  either  own 
the  people  or  the  people  must  own  the  railroads." 
Next  came  the  demands.  Heading  these  were  the 
monetary  planks :  "  a  national  currency,  safe,  sound, 
and  flexible,  issued  by  the  general  Government 
only,  a  full  legal  tender  for  all  debts, "  with  the  sub- 
treasury  system  of  loans  "or  a  better  system;  free 
and  unlimited  coinage  of  silver  and  gold  at  the  pres- 
ent legal  ratio  of  sixteen  to  one";  and  an  increase 
in  the  circulating  medium  until  there  should  be 
not  less  than  $50  per  capita.  With  demands  for  a 
graduated  income  tax,  for  honesty  and  economy  in 
governmental  expenditures,  and  for  postal  savings 
banks,  the  financial  part  of  the  platform  was  com- 
plete. The  usual  plank  declaring  for  government 
ownership  and  control  of  railroads  and  telegraphs 
now  included  the  telephone  systems  as  well,  and  the 
land  plank  opposed  alien  ownership  and  demanded 
the  return  of  lands  held  by  corporations  in  excess  of 
their  actual  needs.  Other  resolutions,  adopted  but 
not  included  in  the  platform,  expressed  sympathy 


144  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

with  labor's  demands  for  shorter  hours,  condemned 
the  use  of  Pinkerton  detectives  in  labor  strife,  and 
favored  greater  restriction  of  immigration,  the  in- 
itiative and  referendum,  direct  election  of  United 
States  senators,  and  one  term  for  the  President  and 
Vice-President. 

The  platform,  according  to  a  news  dispatch  of 
the  time,  was  "received  with  tremendous  enthusi- 
asm .  .  .  and  was  read  and  adopted  almost  be- 
fore the  people  knew  it  was  read.  Instantly  there 
was  enacted  the  mightiest  scene  ever  witnessed  by 
the  human  race.  Fifteen  thousand  people  yelled, 
shrieked,  threw  papers,  hats,  fans,  and  parasols, 
gathered  up  banners,  mounted  shoulders.  Mrs. 
Lease's  little  girl  was  mounted  on  Dr.  Fish's 
shoulders  —  he  on  a  table  on  the  high  platform. 
The  two  bands  were  swamped  with  noise.  .  .  . 
Five  minutes  passed,  ten  minutes,  twenty,  still  the 
noise  and  hurrahs  poured  from  hoarse  throats." 
After  forty  minutes  the  demonstration  died  out 
and  the  convention  was  ready  to  proceed  with  the 
nomination  of  a  presidential  candidate. 

No  such  unanimity  marked  this  further  proce- 
dure, however.  Just  before  the  convention  the 
leaders  of  the  People's  Party  had  thrown  the  old 
parties  into  consternation  by  announcing  that 


THE  POPULIST  BOMBSHELL  OF  1892    145 

Judge  Walter  Q.  Gresham,  of  Indiana,  would  be 
offered  the  nomination.  Judge  Gresham,  a  Re- 
publican with  a  long  and  honorable  public  record, 
had  been  urged  upon  the  Republican  party  in  1884 
and  1888,  and  "Anti-Monopolists"  had  considered 
him  with  favor  on  account  of  his  opinions  and  de- 
cisions regarding  the  operation  and  control  of  rail- 
roads. Just  after  the  adoption  of  the  platform  a 
telegram  from  the  judge  announced  that  he  would 
accept  a  unanimous  nomination.  Since  unanimity 
was  unobtainable,  however,  his  name  was  with- 
drawn later  in  the  day. 

This  left  the  field  to  General  James  B.  Weaver  of 
Iowa  and  Senator  James  H.  Kyle  of  South  Dakota. 
Weaver  represented  the  more  conservative  of  the 
Populists,  the  old  Alliance  men.  His  rival  had  the 
support  of  the  most  radical  element  as  well  as  that 
of  the  silver  men  from  the  mountain  States.  The 
silverites  were  not  inclined  to  insist  upon  their  man, 
however,  declaring  that,  if  the  platform  contained 
the  silver  plank,  they  would  carry  their  States  for 
whatever  candidate  might  be  chosen.  The  old 
campaigner  proved  the  stronger,  and  he  was  nom- 
inated with  General  James  G.  Field  of  Virginia 
for  Vice-President.  Unprejudiced  observers  viewed 
Weaver's  nomination  as  a  tactical  error  on  the  part 


146  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

of  the  Populist  leaders:  "Mr.  Weaver  has  be- 
longed to  the  group  of  third-party  'come-outers* 
for  so  many  years  that  his  name  is  not  one  to 
conjure  with  in  either  of  the  old  camps;  .  .  .  his 
name  suggests  too  strongly  the  abortive  third- 
party  movements  of  the  past  to  excite  much  hope 
or  enthusiasm.  He  is  not  exactly  the  sort  of  a 
Moses  who  can  frighten  Pharaoh  into  fits  or  bring 
convincing  plagues  upon  the  monopolistic  oppres- 
sors of  Israel.  The  wicked  politicians  of  the  Re- 
publican and  Democratic  parties  breathed  easier 
and  ate  with  better  appetites  when  the  Gresham 
bogie  disappeared  and  they  found  their  familiar 
old  enemy,  General  Weaver,  in  the  lead  of  the 
People's  movement. " 

It  may  be  suspected,  however,  that  even  with 
Weaver  at  its  head  this  party,  which  claimed  to 
control  from  two  to  three  million  votes,  and  which 
expected  to  draw  heavily  from  the  discontented 
ranks  of  the  old-line  organizations,  was  not  viewed 
with  absolute  equanimity  by  the  campaign  man- 
agers of  Cleveland  and  of  Harrison.  Some  little  evi- 
dence of  the  perturbation  appeared  in  the  equivo- 
cal attitude  of  both  the  old  parties  with  respect 
to  the  silver  question.  Said  the  Democratic  plat- 
form :  "  We  hold  to  the  use  of  both  gold  and  silver 


THE  POPULIST  BOMBSHELL  OP  1892    147 

as  the  standard  money  of  the  country,  and  to  the 
coinage  of  both  gold  and  silver  without  discrimi- 
nation against  either  metal  or  charge  for  mintage." 
The  rival  Republican  platform  declared  that  "the 
American  people,  from  tradition  and  interest,  favor 
bimetallism,  and  the  Republican  party  demands  the 
use  of  both  gold  and  silver  as  standard  money." 
Each  party  declared  for  steps  to  obtain  an  interna- 
tional agreement  on  the  question.  The  Republi- 
cans attempted  to  throw  a  sop  to  the  labor  vote  by 
favoring  restriction  of  immigration  and  laws  for  the 
protection  of  employees  in  dangerous  occupations, 
and  to  the  farmer  by  pronouncements  against 
trusts,  for  extended  postal  service  —  particularly 
in  rural  districts  —  and  for  the  reclamation  and 
sale  of  arid  lands  to  settlers.  The  Democrats 
went  even  further  and  demanded  the  return  of 
"nearly  one  hundred  million  acres  of  valuable  land" 
then  held  by  "corporations  and  syndicates,  alien 
and  domestic." 

The  directors  of  the  Populist  campaign  proved  to 
be  no  mean  political  strategists.  General  Weaver 
himself  toured  the  country,  accompanied  by  Gen- 
eral Field  when  he  was  in  the  South  and  by  Mrs. 
Lease  when  he  went  to  the  Pacific  coast.  Numer- 
ous other  men  and  women  addressed  the  thousands 


148  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

who  attended  the  meetings,  great  and  small,  all 
over  the  country.  One  unique  feature  of  the 
Populist  campaign  on  the  Pacific  coast  was  the  sing- 
ing of  James  G.  Clark's  People's  Battle-Hymn,  and 
other  songs  expressing  the  hope  and  fears  of  labor 
hi  the  field  and  factory.  Everywhere  it  was  the 
policy  of  the  new  party  to  enlist  the  assistance  of 
the  weaker  of  the  old  parties.  In  the  South,  the 
Populists,  as  a  rule,  arrayed  themselves  with  the 
Republicans  against  the  old  Democracy.  This  pro- 
voked every  device  of  ridicule,  class  prejudice,  and 
scorn,  which  the  dominant  party  could  bring  to 
bear  to  dissuade  former  Democrats  from  voting 
the  People's  ticket.  One  Louisiana  paper  uttered 
this  warning: 

Oily-tongued  orators,  in  many  cases  the  paid  agents 
of  the  Republican  party,  have  for  months  been  circu- 
lating among  the  unsophisticated  and  more  credulous 
classes,  preaching  their  heresies  and  teaching  the  peo- 
ple that  if  Weaver  is  elected  president,  money  may  be 
had  for  the  asking,  transportation  on  the  railroad 
trains  will  be  practically  free,  the  laboring  man  will  be 
transferred  from  his  present  position  and  placed  upon  a 
throne  of  power,  while  lakes  filled  with  molasses,  whose 
shores  are  fringed  with  buckwheat  cakes,  and  islands  of 
Jersey  butter  rising  here  and  there  above  the  surface, 
will  be  a  concomitant  of  every  farm.  The  "  f  orty-acres- 
and-a-mule"  promises  of  the  reconstruction  era  pale 


THE  POPULIST  BOMBSHELL  OF  1892    149 

into  insignificance  beside  the  glowing  pictures  of  pros- 
perity promised  by  the  average  Populist  orator  to 
those  who  support  Weaver. 

The  Pensacola  Address  of  the  Populist  nominees 
on  September  17, 1892,  which  served  as  a  joint  let- 
ter of  acceptance,  was  evidently  issued  at  that 
place  and  time  partly  for  the  purpose  of  influencing 
such  voters  as  might  be  won  over  by  emphasizing 
the  unquestioned  economic  distress  of  most  South- 
ern farmers.  If  the  new  party  could  substantiate 
the  charges  that  both  old  parties  were  the  tools  of 
monopoly  and  Wall  Street,  it  might  insert  the 
wedge  which  would  eventually  split  the  "solid 
South. "  Even  before  the  Pensacola  Address,  the 
state  elections  in  Alabama  and  Arkansas  demon- 
strated that  cooperation  of  Republicans  with  Popu- 
lists was  not  an  idle  dream.  But,  although  fusion 
was  effected  on  state  tickets  in  several  States  in  the 
November  elections,  the  outcome  was  the  choice  of 
Cleveland  electors  throughout  the  South. 

As  the  Populists  tried  in  the  South  to  win  over 
the  Republicans,  so  in  the  North  and  more  espe- 
cially the  West  they  sought  to  control  the  Demo- 
cratic vote  either  by  fusion  or  absorption.  The 
effort  was  so  successful  that  in  Colorado,  Idaho, 
Kansas,  Nevada,  and  North  Dakota,  the  new  party 


150  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

swept  the  field  with  the  assistance  of  the  Demo- 
crats. In  South  Dakota  and  Nebraska,  where 
there  was  no  fusion,  the  Democratic  vote  was 
negligible  and  the  Populists  ran  a  close  second  to 
the  Republicans. 

That  the  tide  of  agrarianism  was  gradually  flow- 
ing westward  as  the  frontier  advanced  is  apparent 
from  the  election  returns  in  the  States  bordering  on 
the  upper  Mississippi.  Iowa  and  Missouri,  where 
the  Alliance  had  been  strong,  experienced  none  of 
the  landslide  which  swept  out  the  Republicans  in 
States  further  west.  In  Minnesota  the  Populists, 
with  a  ticket  headed  by  the  veteran  Donnelly,  ran 
a  poor  third  in  the  state  election,  and  the  entire 
Harrison  electoral  ticket  was  victorious  in  spite 
of  the  endorsement  of  four  Populist  candidates  by 
the  Democrats.  In  the  northwestern  part  of  the 
State,  however,  the  new  party  was  strong  enough 
to  elect  a  Congressman  over  candidates  of  both 
the  old  parties.  In  no  Northern  State  east  of 
the  Mississippi  were  the  Populists  able  to  make  a 
strong  showing;  but  in  Illinois,  the  success  of  John 
P.  Altgeld,  the  Democratic  candidate  for  governor, 
was  due  largely  to  his  advocacy  of  many  of  the 
measures  demanded  by  the  People's  party,  particu- 
larly those  relating  to  labor,  and  to  the  support 


THE  POPULIST  BOMBSHELL  OP  1892    151 

which  he  received  from  the  elements  which  might 
have  been  expected  to  aline  themselves  with  the 
Populists.  On  the  Pacific  coast,  despite  the  musi- 
cal campaign  of  Clark,  Mrs.  Lease,  and  Weaver, 
California  proved  deaf  to  the  People's  cause;  but  in 
Oregon  the  party  stood  second  in  the  lists  and  in 
Washington  it  ran  a  strong  third. 

More  than  a  million  votes,  nearly  nine  per  cent 
of  the  total,  were  cast  for  the  Populist  candidates 
in  this  election  —  a  record  for  a  third  party  the 
year  after  its  birth,  and  one  exceeded  only  by  that 
of  the  Republican  party  when  it  appeared  for  the 
first  time  in  the  national  arena  in  1856.  Twenty- 
two  electoral  votes  added  point  to  the  showing,  for 
hitherto,  since  1860,  third-party  votes  had  been  so 
scattered  that  they  had  affected  the  choice  of  Presi- 
dent only  as  a  makeweight  between  other  parties 
in  closely  contested  States. 

A  week  after  the  elections  General  Weaver  an- 
nounced that  the  Populists  had  succeeded  far  be- 
yond their  expectations.  "  The  Republican  party," 
he  asserted,  "is  as  dead  as  the  Whig  party  was  after 
the  Scott  campaign  of  1852,  and  from  this  time  for- 
ward will  diminish  in  every  State  of  the  'Union  and 
cannot  make  another  campaign.  .  .  .  The  Pop- 
ulist will  now  commence  a  vigorous  campaign  and 


152  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

will  push  the  work  of  organization  and  education 
in  every  county  in  the  Union. "  There  were  those, 
however,  who  believed  that  the  new  party  had 
made  a  great  mistake  in  having  anything  to  do 
with  either  of  the  old  parties,  that  fusion,  particu- 
larly of  the  sort  which  resulted  in  combination  tick- 
ets, was  a  compromise  with  the  enemy,  and  that 
more  votes  had  been  lost  than  won  by  the  process. 
This  feeling  found  characteristic  expression  in  an 
editorial  in  a  Minnesota  paper: 

Take  an  audience  of  republican  voters  in  a  school- 
house  where  a  county  fusion  has  taken  place  —  or  the 
press  is  full  of  the  electoral  deal  —  and  the  audience 
will  applaud  the  sentiments  of  the  speaker  —  but  they 
wont  vote  a  mongrel  or  democratic  ticket!  A  wet 
blanket  has  been  thrown! 

"Oh,"  says  someone,  "but  the  democratic  party  is 
a  party  of  reform!"  Well,  my  friend,  you  better  go 
down  south  and  talk  that  to  the  peoples  party  where 
they  have  been  robbed  of  their  franchises  by  fraud 
and  outrage! 

Ah,  and  there  the  peoples  party  fused  the  republi- 
cans!!! 

Oh  whitewash !  Where  is  thy  lime-kiln,  that  we  may 
swab  off  the  dark  blemishes  of  the  hour ! !  Aye,  and  on  the 
whited  wall,  draw  thee  a  picture  of  power  and  beauty 
—  Cleveland,  for  instance,  thanking  the  peoples  party 
for  all  the  favors  gratuitously  granted  by  our  mongrel 
saints  in  speckled  linen  and  green  surtouts. 


THE  POPULIST  BOMBSHELL  OF  1892    153 

As  time  gave  perspective,  however,  the  opinion 
grew  that  1892  had  yielded  all  that  could  possibly 
have  been  hoped.  The  lessons  of  the  campaign  may 
have  been  hard,  but  they  had  been  learned,  and, 
withal,  a  stinging  barb  had  been  thrust  into  the  side 
of  the  Republican  party,  the  organization  which, 
in  the  minds  of  most  crusaders,  was  principally  re- 
sponsible for  the  creation  and  nurture  of  their  ills. 
It  was  generally  determined  that  in  the  next  cam- 
paign Populism  should  stand  upon  its  own  feet; 
Democratic  and  Republican  votes  should  be  won 
by  conversion  of  individuals  to  the  cause  rather 
than  by  hybrid  amalgamation  of  parties  and  pre- 
election agreements  for  dividing  the  spoils.  But  it 
was  just  this  fusion  which  blinded  the  eyes  of  the 
old  party  leaders  to  the  significance  of  the  Populist 
returns.  Democrats,  with  a  clear  majority  of  elec- 
toral votes,  were  not  inclined  to  worry  about  local 
losses  or  to  value  incidental  gains;  and  Republicans 
felt  that  the  menace  of  the  third  party  was  much 
less  portentous  than  it  might  have  been  as  an 
independent  movement. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE   SILVER   ISSUE 

A  REMARKABLE  manifesto,  dated  February  22, 
1895,  summarized  the  grievances  of  the  Populists 
in  these  words: 

As  early  as  1865-66  a  conspiracy  was  entered  into 
between  the  gold  gamblers  of  Europe  and  America  to 
accomplish  the  following  purposes:  to  fasten  upon  the 
people  of  the  United  States  the  burdens  of  perpetual 
debt;  to  destroy  the  greenbacks  which  had  safely 
brought  us  through  the  perils  of  war;  to  strike  down 
silver  as  a  money  metal;  to  deny  to  the  people  the  use 
of  Federal  paper  and  silver  —  the  two  independent 
sources  of  money  guaranteed  by  the  Constitution;  to 
fasten  upon  the  country  the  single  gold  standard  of 
Britain,  and  to  delegate  to  thousands  of  banking  cor- 
porations, organized  for  private  gain,  the  sovereign 
control,  for  all  time,  over  the  issue  and  volume  of  all 
supplemental  paper  currency. 

Declaring  that  the  "international  gold  ring"  was 
summoning  all  its  powers  to  strike  at  the  prosperity 
of  the  country,  the  authors  of  this  address  called 

154 


THE  SILVER  ISSUE  155 

upon  Populists  to  take  up  the  gauntlet  and  meet 
"the  enemy  upon  his  chosen  field  of  battle,"  with 
the  "  aid  and  cooperation  of  all  persons  who  favor 
the  immediate  free  coinage  of  silver  at  a  ratio  of 
16-1,  the  issue  of  all  paper  money  by  the  Govern- 
ment without  the  intervention  of  banks  of  issue,  and 
who  are  opposed  to  the  issue  of  interest-bearing 
government  bonds  in  the  time  of  peace. " 

There  was  nothing  new  in  this  declaration  of  hos- 
tility to  bank  issues  and  interest-bearing  bonds, 
nor  in  this  demand  for  government  paper  money, 
for  these  prejudices  and  this  predilection  had  given 
rise  to  the  "Ohio  idea,"  by  force  of  which  George 
H.  Pendleton  had  hoped  to  achieve  the  presidency 
in  1868.  These  same  notions  had  been  the  essence 
of  the  platforms  of  the  Greenback  party  in  the  late 
seventies;  and  they  had  jostled  government  owner- 
ship of  railroads  for  first  place  in  pronunciamentos 
of  labor  and  agricultural  organizations  and  of  third 
parties  all  during  the  eighties.  Free  silver,  on  the 
other  hand,  although  not  ignored  in  the  earlier 
period,  did  not  attain  foremost  rank  among  the 
demands  of  the  dissatisfied  classes  until  the  last 
decade  of  the  century  and  more  particularly  after 
the  panic  of  1893. 

Prior  to  1874  or  1875  the  "silver  question"  did 


156  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

not  exist.  In  1873  Congress,  moved  by  the  report 
of  a  commission  it  had  authorized,  had  demone- 
tized silver;  that  is,  it  had  provided  that  the  gold 
dollar  should  be  the  standard  of  value,  and  omitted 
the  standard  silver  dollar  from  the  list  of  silver 
coins. x  In  this  consisted  the  "Crime  of  '73."  At 
the  time  when  this  law  was  enacted  it  had  not  for 
many  years  been  profitable  to  coin  silver  bullion 
into  dollars  because  silver  was  undervalued  at  the 
established  ratio  of  sixteen  to  one.  In  1867  the 
International  Monetary  Conference  of  Paris  had 
pronounced  itself  in  favor  of  a  single  gold  standard 
of  currency,  and  the  principal  countries  of  Europe 
had  preceded  the  United  States  in  demonetizing 
silver  or  in  limiting  its  coinage.  In  1874  as  a  re- 
sult of  a  revision  of  the  statutes  of  the  United 
States,  the  existing  silver  dollars  were  reduced  to 
the  basis  of  subsidiary  coins  with  only  limited  legal 
tender  value. 

The  Act  of  1873  was  before  Congress  for  four 
sessions;  every  section,  including  that  which  made 
gold  the  sole  standard  of  value,  was  discussed 
even  by  those  who  later  claimed  that  the  Act  had 
been  passed  surreptitiously.  Whatever  opposition 

xThe  only  reference  to  the  dollar  was  to  "the  trade  dollar"  of 
heavier  weight,  for  use  in  the  Orient. 


THE  SILVER  ISSUE  157 

developed  at  this  time  was  not  directed  against  the 
omission  of  the  silver  dollar  from  the  list  of  coins 
nor  against  the  establishment  of  a  single  standard 
of  value.  The  situation  was  quickly  changed,  how- 
ever, by  the  rapid  decline  in  the  market  price  of  sil- 
ver. The  bimetallists  claimed  that  this  decline  was 
a  result  of  the  monetary  changes;  the  advocates  of 
the  gold  standard  asserted  that  it  was  due  to  the 
great  increase  in  the  production  of  silver.  What- 
ever the  cause,  the  result  was  that,  shortly  after 
silver  had  been  demonetized,  its  value  in  propor- 
tion to  gold  fell  below  that  expressed  by  the  ratio 
of  sixteen  to  one.  Under  these  circumstances  the 
producers  could  have  made  a  profit  by  taking  their 
bullion  to  the  mint  and  having  it  coined  into  dol- 
lars, if  it  had  not  been  for  the  Act  of  1873.  It  is 
not  strange,  therefore,  that  the  people  of  those 
Western  States  whose  prosperity  depended  largely 
on  the  silver  mining  industry  demanded  the  re- 
monetization  of  this  metal.  At  the  same  time  the 
stringency  in  the  money  market  and  the  low  prices 
following  the  panic  of  1873  added  weight  to  the  ar- 
guments of  those  who  favored  an  increase  in  the 
quantity  of  currency  in  circulation  and  who  saw  in 
the  free  and  unlimited  coinage  of  silver  one  means 
of  accomplishing  this  end.  So  powerful  was  the 


158  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

demand,  especially  from  the  West,  that  in  1878  the 
Bland-Allison  Act,  passed  over  the  veto  of  Presi- 
dent Hayes,  provided  for  the  restoration  of  the  sil- 
ver dollar  to  the  list  of  coins,  with  full  legal  tender 
quality,  and  required  the  Treasury  to  purchase  in 
the  open  market  from  two  to  four  million  dollars' 
worth  of  bullion  each  month.  This  compromise, 
however,  was  unsatisfactory  to  those  who  desired 
the  free  coinage  of  silver,  and  it  failed  to  please  the 
champions  of  the  single  standard. 

For  ten  years  the  question  of  a  choice  between  a 
single  standard  or  bimetallism,  between  free  coin- 
age or  limited  coinage  of  silver,  was  one  of  the  prin- 
cipal economic  problems  of  the  world.  Interna- 
tional conferences,  destined  to  have  no  positive  re- 
sults, met  in  1878  and  again  in  1881 ;  in  the  United 
States  Congress  read  reports  and  debated  measures 
on  coinage  in  the  intervals  between  tariff  debates. 
Political  parties  were  split  on  sectional  lines :  West- 
ern Republicans  and  Democrats  alike  were  largely 
in  favor  of  free  silver,  but  their  Eastern  associates 
as  generally  took  the  other  side.  Party  platforms 
hi  the  different  States  diverged  widely  on  this  is- 
sue; and  monetary  planks  in  national  platforms,  if 
included  at  all,  were  so  framed  as  to  commit 
the  party  to  neither  side.  Both  parties,  however, 


THE  SILVER  ISSUE  159 

could  safely  pronounce  for  bimetallism  under  inter- 
national agreement,  since  there  was  little  real  pros- 
pect of  procuring  such  an  agreement.  The  minor 
parties  as  a  rule  frankly  advocated  free  silver. 

In  1890,  the  subject  of  silver  coinage  assumed 
new  importance.  The  silverites  in  Congress  were 
reenforced  by  representatives  from  new  States  in 
the  far  West,  the  admission  of  which  had  not  been 
unconnected  with  political  exigencies  on  the  part 
of  the  Republican  party,  The  advocates  of  the 
change  were  not  strong  enough  to  force  through  a 
free-silver  bill,  but  they  were  able  by  skillful  log- 
rolling to  bring  about  the  passage  of  the  Silver  Pur- 
chase Act.  This  measure,  frequently  called  the 
Sherman  Law,1  directed  the  Secretary  of  the  Treas- 
ury to  purchase,  with  legal  tender  Treasury  notes 
issued  for  the  purpose,  4,500,000  ounces  of  pure  sil- 
ver each  month  at  the  market  price.  As  the  metal 
was  worth  at  that  time  about  a  dollar  an  ounce,  this 
represented  an  increase,  for  the  time  being,  over  the 
maximum  allowed  under  the  Bland- Allison  Act  and 
more  than  double  the  minimum  required  by  that 
measure,  which  was  all  the  Treasury  had  ever 

1  John  Sherman,  then  Secretary  of  Treasury,  had  a  large  share  in 
giving  final  form  to  the  bill,  which  he  favored  only  for  fear  of  a  still 
more  objectionable  measure.  See  Sherman's  Recollections,  pp.  1069, 
1188. 


160  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

purchased.  But  the  Silver  Purchase  Act  failed  to 
check  the  downward  trend  in  the  value  of  the  metal. 
The  bullion  in  a  silver  dollar,  which  had  been  worth 
$1.02  in  1872,  had  declined  to  seventy-two  cents  in 
1889.  It  rose  to  seventy-six  in  1891  but  then  de- 
clined rapidly  to  sixty  in  1893,  and  during  the  next 
three  years  the  intrinsic  value  of  a  "cartwheel" 
was  just  about  half  its  legal  tender  value. 

Even  under  the  Bland-Allison  Act  the  Treasury 
Department  had  experienced  great  difficulty  in 
keeping  in  circulation  a  reasonable  proportion  of 
the  silver  dollars  and  the  silver  certificates  which 
were  issued  in  lieu  of  part  of  them,  and  in  maintain- 
ing a  sufficient  gold  reserve  to  insure  the  stability 
of  the  currency.  When  the  Silver  Purchase  Act 
went  into  operation,  therefore,  the  monetary  situa- 
tion contributed  its  share  to  conditions  which  pro- 
duced the  panic  of  1893.  Thereupon  the  silver  is- 
sue became  more  than  ever  a  matter  of  nation-wide 
discussion. 

From  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  the  country  was 
flooded  with  controversial  writing,  much  of  it  cast 
in  a  form  to  make  an  appeal  to  classes  which  had 
neither  the  leisure  nor  the  training  to  master  this 
very  intricate  economic  problem.  W.  H.  Harvey's 
Coin's  Financial  School  was  the  most  widely  read 


THE  SILVER  ISSUE  161 

campaign  document,  although  hundreds  of  similar 
pamphlets  and  books  had  an  enormous  circulation. 
The  pithy  and  plausible  arguments  of  "Coin"  and 
his  ready  answers  to  questions  supposedly  put  by 
prominent  editors,  bankers,  and  university  profes- 
sors, as  well  as  by  J.  R.  Sovereign,  master  workman 
of  the  Knights  of  Labor,  tickled  the  fancy  of  thou- 
sands of  farmers  who  saw  their  own  plight  depicted 
in  the  crude  but  telling  woodcuts  which  sprinkled 
the  pages  of  the  book.  In  his  mythical  school  "the 
smooth  little  financier"  converted  to  silver  many 
who  had  been  arguing  for  gold;  but  —  what  is  more 
to  the  point  —  he  also  convinced  hundreds  of  vot- 
ers that  gold  was  the  weapon  with  which  the  bank- 
ers of  England  and  America  had  slain  silver  in  order 
to  maintain  high  interest  rates  while  reducing 
prices,  and  that  it  was  the  tool  with  which  they 
were  everywhere  welding  the  shackles  upon  labor. 
"  Coin  "  harped  upon  a  string  to  which,  down  to  the 
time  of  the  Spanish  War,  most  Americans  were  ever 
responsive  —  the  conflict  of  interests  between  Eng- 
land and  the  United  States.  "If  it  is  claimed, "  he 
said,  "  we  must  adopt  for  our  money  the  metal  Eng- 
land selects,  and  can  have  no  independent  choice  in 
the  matter,  let  us  make  the  test  and  find  out  if  it  is 
true. "  He  pointed  to  the  nations  of  the  earth  where 


162  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

a  silver  standard  ruled :  "The  farmer  in  Mexico  sells 
his  bushel  of  wheat  for  one  dollar.  The  farmer 
in  the  United  States  sells  his  bushel  of  wheat  for 
fifty  cents.  The  former  is  proven  by  the  history  of 
the  world  to  be  an  equitable  price.  The  latter  is 
writing  its  history,  in  letters  of  blood,  on  the  ap- 
palling cloud  of  debt  that  is  sweeping  with  ruin  and 
desolation  over  the  farmers  of  this  country. " 

When  many  men  of  sound  reputation  believed 
the  maintenance  of  a  gold  standard  impossible 
what  wonder  that  millions  of  farmers  shouted  with 
"Coin":  "Give  the  people  back  their  favored 
primary  money!  Give  us  two  arms  with  which  to 
transact  business!  Silver  the  right  arm  and  gold 
the  left  arm !  Silver  the  money  of  the  people,  and 
gold  the  money  of  the  rich.  Stop  this  legalized 
robbery  that  is  transferring  the  property  of  the 
debtors  to  the  possession  of  the  creditors.  .  .  . 
Drive  these  money-changers  from  our  temples. 
Let  them  discover  your  aspect,  their  masters  —  the 
people." 

The  relations  of  the  Populist  party  to  silver  were 
at  once  the  result  of  conviction  and  expediency; 
cheap  money  had  been  one,  frequently  the  most 
prominent,  of  the  demands  of  the  farming  class, 
not  only  from  the  inception  of  the  Greenback 


THE  SILVER  ISSUE  163 

movement,  as  we  have  seen,  but  from  the  very  be- 
ginning of  American  history.  Indeed,  the  pioneer 
everywhere  has  needed  capital  and  has  believed 
that  it  could  be  obtained  only  through  money.  The 
cheaper  the  money,  the  better  it  served  his  needs. 
The  Western  farmer  preferred,  other  things  being 
equal,  that  the  supply  of  currency  should  be  in- 
creased by  direct  issue  of  paper  by  the  Government. 
Things,  however,  were  not  equal.  In  the  Moun- 
tain States  were  many  interested  in  silver  as  a  com- 
modity whose  assistance  could  be  counted  on  in  a 
campaign  to  increase  the  amount  of  the  metal  in 
circulation.  There  were,  moreover,  many  other 
voters  who,  while  regarding  Greenbackism  as  an 
economic  heresy,  were  convinced  that  bimetallism 
offered  a  safe  and  sound  solution  of  the  currency 
problem.  For  the  sake  of  added  votes  the  infla- 
tionists were  ready  to  waive  any  preference  as  to 
the  form  in  which  the  cheap  money  should  be 
issued.  Before  the  actual  formation  of  the  People's 
Party,  the  farmers'  organizations  had  set  out  to 
capture  votes  by  advocating  free  silver.  After  the 
election  of  1892  free  silver  captured  the  Populist 
organization. 

Heartened  by  the  large  vote  of  1892  the  Populist 
leaders  prepared  to  drive  the  wedge  further  into  the 


164  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

old  parties  and  even  hoped  to  send  their  candidates 
through  the  breach  to  Congress  and  the  presidency. 
A  secret  organization,  known  as  the  Industrial 
League  of  the  United  States,  in  which  the  leaders 
were  for  the  most  part  the  prominent  officials  of  the 
People's  Party,  afforded  for  a  time  through  its 
lodges  the  machinery  with  which  to  control  and 
organize  the  silverites  of  the  West  and  the  South. 

The  most  notable  triumph  of  1893  was  the  selec- 
tion of  Judge  William  V.  Allen,  by  the  Democrats 
and  Independents  of  Nebraska,  to  represent  that 
State  in  the  United  States  Senate.  Born  in  Ohio, 
in  a  house  which  had  been  a  station  on  the  "under- 
ground railroad"  to  assist  escaping  negroes,  Allen 
at  ten  years  of  age  had  gone  with  his  family  to  Iowa. 
After  one  unsuccessful  attempt,  he  enlisted  in  the 
Union  Army  at  the  age  of  fifteen  and  served  from 
1862  to  the  end  of  the  War.  When  peace  came,  he 
resumed  his  schooling,  attended  college,  studied 
law,  and  in  1869  was  admitted  to  the  bar.  In  1884 
he  went  to  Madison  County,  Nebraska,  where 
seven  years  later  he  was  elected  district  judge  by 
the  Populists.  Reared  in  a  family  which  had  been 
Republican,  he  himself  had  supported  this  party 
until  the  campaign  of  1890.  "I  have  always," 
said  he,  "looked  upon  a  political  party  .  .  . 


THE  SILVER  ISSUE  165 

simply  as  a  means  to  an  end.  I  think  a  party 
should  be  held  no  more  sacred  than  a  man's  shoes 
or  garments,  and  that  whenever  it  fails  to  subserve 
the  purposes  of  good  government  a  man  should 
abandon  it  as  cheerfully  as  he  dispenses  with  his 
wornout  clothes."  As  Senator,  Allen  attracted 
attention  not  only  by  his  powers  of  physical  en- 
durance as  attested  by  a  fifteen-hour  speech  in  op- 
position to  the  bill  for  the  repeal  of  the  Silver  Pur- 
chase Act,  but  also  by  his  integrity  of  character. 
"If  Populism  can  produce  men  of  Senator  Allen's 
mold,"  was  the  comment  of  one  Eastern  review, 
"and  then  lift  them  into  positions  of  the  highest 
responsibility,  one  might  be  tempted  to  suggest 
that  an  epidemic  of  this  Western  malady  would 
prove  beneficial  to  some  Eastern  communities  and 
have  salutary  results  for  the  nation  at  large." 

In  this  same  year  (1893)  Kansas  became  a  storm- 
center  in  national  politics  once  more  by  reason  of  a 
contest  between  parties  for  control  of  the  lower 
house  of  the  legislature.  The  returns  had  given 
the  Republicans  a  majority  in  the  assembly,  but 
several  Republican  seats  had  been  contested  on  sus- 
picion of  fraud.  If  the  holders  of  these  seats  were 
debarred  from  voting,  the  Populists  could  outvote 
the  Republicans.  The  situation  itself  was  fraught 


166  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

with  comedy;  and  the  actions  of  the  contestants 
made  it  nothing  less  than  farce.  The  assembly 
convened  on  the  10th  of  January,  and  both  Repub- 
lican and  Populist  speakers  were  declared  duly 
elected  by  their  respective  factions.  Loftily  ignor- 
ing each  other,  the  two  speakers  went  to  the  desk 
and  attempted  to  conduct  the  business  of  the 
house.  Neither  party  left  the  assembly  chamber 
that  night;  the  members  slept  on  the  benches;  the 
speakers  called  a  truce  at  two  in  the  morning,  and 
lay  down,  gavels  in  hand,  facing  each  other  behind 
the  desk,  to  get  what  rest  they  co'uld.  For  over 
two  weeks  the  two  houses  continued  in  tumultuous 
session.  Meanwhile  men  were  crowding  into  To- 
peka  from  all  over  the  State:  grim-faced  Populist 
farmers,  determined  that  Republican  chicanery 
should  not  wrest  from  them  the  fruits  of  the  elec- 
tion; equally  determined  Republicans,  resolved 
that  the  Populists  should  not,  by  charges  of  elec- 
tion fraud,  rob  them  of  their  hard- won  majority. 
Both  sides  came  armed  but  apparently  hoping  to 
avoid  bloodshed. 

Finally,  on  the  15th  of  February,  the  Populist 
house  retreated  from  the  chamber,  leaving  the  Re- 
publicans in  possession,  and  proceeded  to  transact 
business  of  state  in  the  corridor  of  the  Capitol. 


THE  SILVER  ISSUE  167 

Populist  sympathizers  now  besieged  the  assembly 
chamber,  immuring  the  luckless  Republicans  and 
incidentally  a  few  women  who  had  come  in  as  mem- 
bers of  the  suffrage  lobby  and  were  now  getting 
more  of  political  equality  than  they  had  antici- 
pated. Food  had  to  be  sent  through  the  Populist 
lines  in  baskets,  or  drawn  up  to  the  windows  of 
the  chamber  while  the  Populist  mob  sat  on  the 
main  stairway  within.  Towards  evening,  the  Pop- 
ulist janitor  turned  off  the  heat;  and  the  Republi- 
cans shivered  until  oil  stoves  were  fetched  by  their 
followers  outside  and  hoisted  through  the  windows. 
The  Republican  sheriff  swore  in  men  of  his  party  as 
special  deputies;  the  Populist  governor  called  out 
the  militia. 

The  situation  was  at  once  too  absurd  and  too 
grave  to  be  permitted  to  continue.  "Sockless" 
Jerry  Simpson  now  counseled  the  Populists  to  let 
the  decision  go  to  the  courts.  The  judges,  to  be 
sure,  were  Republican;  but  Simpson,  ever  resource- 
ful, argued  that  if  they  decided  against  the  Popu- 
lists, the  house  and  senate  could  then  impeach 
them.  Mrs.  Lease,  however,  was  sure  that  the 
Populists  would  not  have  the  courage  to  take  up 
impeachment  proceedings,  and  the  event  proved 
her  judgment  correct.  When  the  struggle  was 


168  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

finally  brought  to  an  end  with  the  assistance  of  the 
judicial  machinery,  the  Republicans  were  left  in 
control  of  the  house  of  representatives,  while  the 
Populists  retained  the  senate.  In  joint  session 
the  Republicans  could  be  outvoted;  hence  a  silver 
Democrat,  John  Martin,  was  sent  to  Washington 
to  work  with  Peffer  in  the  Senate  for  the  common 
cause  of  silver. 

The  congressional  and  state  elections  of  1894  re- 
vealed the  unstable  equilibrium  of  parties,  and  at 
the  same  time  the  total  Populist  vote  of  nearly  a 
million  and  a  half  reflected  the  increasing  popular 
unrest.  In  the  West,  however,  the  new  party  was 
not  so  successful  in  winning  elections  as  it  had  been 
in  1892  because  the  hostile  attitude,  sometimes  of 
the  Populists  and  sometimes  of  the  Democrats, 
made  fusion  impossible  in  most  cases.  A  few  vic- 
tories were  won,  to  be  sure:  Nebraska  elected  a 
free-silver  Democrat-Populist  governor,  while  Ne- 
vada was  carried  by  the  silver  party;  but  Colorado, 
Idaho,  Wyoming,  Kansas,  and  North  Dakota  re- 
turned to  the  Republican  fold.  In  the  South,  the 
fusion  between  Populists  and  Republicans  against 
the  dominant  Democrats  was  more  successful. 
From  several  States,  Congressmen  were  elected, 
who,  whether  under  the  name  of  Populist  or 


THE  SILVER  ISSUE  169 

Republican,  represented  the  radical  element.  In 
South  Carolina  the  Democratic  party  adopted  the 
Farmers'  Alliance  platform,  swept  the  State  in  the 
elections,  and  sent  "Pitchfork"  Tillman  to  the 
United  States  Senate  as  an  anti-administration 
Democrat.  Tillman  admitted  that  he  was  not  one 
of  those  infatuated  persons  who  believed  that  "all 
the  financial  wisdom  in  the  country  is  monopolized 
by  the  East, "  and  who  said,  "  *  Me,  too, '  every  time 
Cleveland  grunts."  "Send  me  to  Washington," 
was  his  advice  to  cheering  crowds,  "and  I'll  stick 
my  pitchfork  into  his  old  ribs!" 

Every  political  move  in  1895  was  calculated  with 
reference  to  the  presidential  election  of  1896.  Both 
old  parties  were  inoculated  with  the  free-silver 
virus;  silver  men  could  have  passed  a  free  coinage 
bill  in  both  houses  of  Congress  at  any  moment  but 
were  restrained  chiefly  by  the  knowledge  that  such 
a  measure  would  be  vetoed  by  President  Cleveland. 
The  free  coinage  of  silver,  which  was  the  chief  de- 
mand of  Populism,  was  also  the  ardent  desire  of  a 
majority  of  the  people  west  of  the  Alleghanies,  ir- 
respective of  their  political  affiliations.  Nothing 
seemed  more  logical,  then,  than  the  union  of 
all  silver  men  to  enforce  the  adoption  of  their 
program.  There  was  great  diversity  of  opinion, 


170  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

however,  as  to  the  best  means  of  accomplishing 
this  union.  General  Weaver  started  a  movement 
to  add  the  forces  of  the  American  Bimetallic 
League  and  the  silver  Democrats  to  the  ranks  of 
the  People's  Party.  But  the  silver  Democrats,  be- 
lieving that  they  comprised  a  majority  of  the 
party,  proceeded  to  organize  themselves  for  the 
purpose  of  controlling  that  party  at  its  coming  na- 
tional conventions;  and  most  of  the  Populist  lead- 
ers felt  that,  should  this  movement  be  victorious, 
the  greatest  prospect  of  success  for  their  program 
lay  in  a  fusion  of  the  two  parties.  Some  there  were, 
indeed,  who  opposed  fusion  under  any  conditions, 
foreseeing  that  it  would  mean  the  eventual  extinc- 
tion of  the  People's  Party.  Prominent  among 
these  were  Ignatius  Donnelly  of  Minnesota,  "Gen- 
eral" J.  S.  Coxey  of  Ohio,  and  Senator  Peffer  of 
Kansas.  In  the  South  the  "middle-of-the-road" 
element,  as  the  opponents  of  fusion  were  called,  was 
especially  strong,  for  there  the  Populists  had  been 
cooperating  with  the  Republicans  since  1892,  and 
not  even  agreement  on  the  silver  issue  could  break 
down  the  barrier  of  antagonism  between  them  and 
the  old-line  Democrats. 

It  remained,  then,  for  the  political  events  of  1896 
to  decide  which  way  the  current  of  Populism  would 


THE  SILVER  ISSUE  171 

flow  —  whether  it  would  maintain  an  independent 
course,  receiving  tributaries  from  every  political 
source,  eventually  becoming  a  mighty  river,  and, 
like  the  Republican  party  of  1856  and  1860,  sweep- 
ing away  an  older  party;  or  whether  it  would  turn 
aside  and  mingle  with  the  stream  of  Democracy, 
there  to  lose  its  identity  forever. 


CHAPTER  XH 

THE    BATTLE    OF    THE    STANDARDS 

WHEN  the  Republicans  met  in  convention  at  St. 
Louis  in  the  middle  of  June,  1896,  the  monetary 
issue  had  already  dwarfed  all  other  political  ques- 
tions. It  was  indeed  the  rock  on  which  the  party 
might  have  crashed  in  utter  shipwreck  but  for  the 
precautions  of  one  man  who  had  charted  the  angry 
waters  and  the  dangerous  shoals  and  who  now  had 
a  firm  grasp  on  the  helm.  Marcus  A.  Hanna,  or 
"  Uncle  Mark,"  was  the  genial  owner  of  more  mines, 
oil  wells,  street  railways,  aldermen,  and  legislators 
than  any  other  man  in  Ohio.  Hanna  was  an  al- 
most perfect  example  of  what  the  Populists  de- 
nounced as  the  capitalist  in  politics.  Cynically 
declaring  that  "no  man  in  public  life  owes  the  pub- 
lic anything, "  he  had  gone  his  unscrupulous  way, 
getting  control  of  the  political  machine  of  Cleve- 
land, acquiring  influence  in  the  state  legislature, 
and  now  even  assuming  dictatorship  over  the 

172 


THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  STANDARDS  173 

national  Republican  party.  Because  he  had  found 
that  political  power  was  helpful  in  the  prosecution 
of  his  vast  business  enterprises,  he  went  forth  to 
accumulate  political  power,  just  as  frankly  as  he 
would  have  gone  to  buy  the  machinery  for  pump- 
nig  oil  from  one  of  his  wells.  Hanna  was  a  stanch 
friend  of  the  gold  standard,  but  he  was  too  clever  to 
alienate  the  sympathies  of  the  Republican  silverites 
by  supporting  the  nomination  of  a  man  known  to 
be  an  uncompromising  advocate  of  gold.  He  chose 
a  safer  candidate,  a  man  whose  character  he  sin- 
cerely admired  and  whose  opinions  he  might  re- 
sonably  expect  to  sway  —  his  personal  friend,  Ma- 
jor William  McKinley.  This  was  a  clever  choice: 
McKinley  was  known  to  the  public  largely  as  the 
author  of  the  McKinley  tariff  bill;  his  protec- 
tionism pleased  the  East;  and  what  was  known 
of  his  attitude  on  the  currency  question  did  not 
offend  the  West.  In  Congress  he  had  voted  for 
the  Bland-Allison  bill  and  had  advocated  the  freer 
use  of  silver.  McKinley  was,  indeed,  an  ideally 
"safe"  candidate,  an  upright,  affable  gentleman 
whose  aquiline  features  conferred  on  him  the  sem- 
blance of  commanding  power  and  masked  the  es- 
sential weakness  and  indecision  which  would  make 
him,  from  Mark  Hanna's  point  of  view,  a  desirable 


174  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

President.     McKinley  would  always  swim  with 
the  tide. 

In  his  friend's  behalf  Hanna  carried  on  a  shrewd 
campaign  in  the  newspapers,  keeping  the  question 
of  currency  in  the  background  as  far  as  possible, 
playing  up  McKinley's  sound  tariff  policy,  and  re- 
peating often  the  slogan  —  welcome  after  the  recent 
lean  years  —  "McKinley  and  the  full  dinner  pail." 
McKinley  prudently  refused  to  take  any  stand  on 
the  currency  question,  protesting  that  he  could  not 
anticipate  the  party  platform  and  that  he  would  be 
bound  by  whatever  declarations  the  party  might 
see  fit  to  make.  Even  after  the  convention  had 
opened,  McKinley  and  Hanna  were  reticent  on  the 
silver  question.  Finally,  fearing  that  some  kind  of 
compromise  would  be  made,  the  advocates  of  the 
gold  standard  went  to  Mr.  Hanna  and  demanded 
that  a  gold  plank  be  incorporated  in  the  platform. 
Hanna  gracefully  acceded  to  their  demands  and 
thus  put  them  under  obligation  to  repay  him  by 
supporting  McKinley  for  the  nomination.  The 
platform  which  was  forthwith  reported  to  the  con- 
vention contained  the  unequivocal  gold  plank, 
as  Hanna  had  long  before  planned.  Immediately 
thereafter  a  minority  of  thirty-four  delegates,  led 
by  Senator  Teller  of  Colorado,  left  the  convention, 


THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  STANDARDS  175 

later  to  send  out  an  address  advising  all  Republi- 
cans who  believed  in  free  coinage  of  silver  to  sup- 
port the  Democratic  ticket.  The  nomination  of 
William  McKinley  and  Garret  A.  Hobart  followed 
with  very  little  opposition. 

There  was  nothing  cut  and  dried  about  the 
Democratic  convention  which  assembled  three 
weeks  later  in  Chicago.  The  Northeastern  States 
and  a  few  others  sent  delegations  in  favor  of  the 
gold  standard,  but  free  silver  and  the  West  were  in 
the  saddle.  This  was  demonstrated  when,  in  the 
face  of  all  precedent,  the  nominee  of  the  national 
committee  for  temporary  chairman  was  rejected 
in  favor  of  Senator  John  W.  Daniel  of  Virginia,  a 
strong  silver  man.  The  second  day  of  the  conven- 
tion saw  the  advantage  pushed  further :  each  Terri- 
tory had  its  representation  increased  threefold; 
of  contesting  delegations  those  who  represented 
the  gold  element  in  their  respective  States  were 
unseated  to  make  way  for  silverites;  and  Stephen 
M.  WTiite,  one  of  the  California  senators,  was  made 
permanent  chairman. 

On  the  third  day  of  the  convention  the  platform, 
devoted  largely  to  the  money  question,  was  the 
subject  of  bitter  debate.  "We  are  unalterably 
opposed  to  monometallism,  which  has  locked  fast 


176  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

the  prosperity  of  an  industrial  people  in  the  pa- 
ralysis of  hard  times,"  proclaimed  the  report  of  the 
committee  on  resolutions.  "Gold  monometallism 
is  a  British  policy,  and  its  adoption  has  brought 
other  nations  into  financial  servitude  to  London. 
.  .  .  We  demand  the  free  and  unlimited  coinage  of 
both  gold  and  silver  at  the  present  legal  ratio  of 
sixteen  to  one  without  waiting  for  the  aid  or  con- 
sent of  any  other  nation."  A  minority  of  the  com- 
mittee on  resolutions  proposed  two  amendments 
to  the  report,  one  pronouncing  in  favor  of  a  gold 
standard,  and  the  other  commending  the  record  of 
Grover  Cleveland,  a  courtesy  always  extended  to  a 
presidential  incumbent  of  the  same  party.  At  the 
name  of  Cleveland,  Senator  Tillman  leaped  to  his 
feet  and  delivered  himself  of  characteristic  in- 
vective against  the  President,  the  "tool  of  Wall 
Street,"  the  abject  slave  of  gold.  Senator  David 
B.  Hill  of  New  York,  who  had  been  rejected  for 
temporary  chairman,  defended  the  gold  plank  in 
a  logical  analysis  of  monetary  principles.  But 
logical  analysis  could  not  prevail  against  emotion; 
that  clamorous  mass  of  men  was  past  reasoning 
now,  borne  they  hardly  knew  whither  on  the  cur- 
rent of  their  own  excitement.  He  might  as  well 
have  tried  to  dam  Niagara. 


THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  STANDARDS     177 

Others  tried  to  stem  the  onrushing  tide  but  with 
no  better  success.  It  seemed  to  be  impossible  for 
any  one  to  command  the  attention  and  respect  of 
that  tumultuous  gathering.  Even  Senator  James 
K.  Jones  of  Arkansas,  a  member  of  the  major- 
ity group  of  the  committee  on  resolutions,  failed 
equally  with  Tillman  to  give  satisfactory  expres- 
sion to  the  sentiments  of  that  convention,  which 
felt  inchoately  what  it  desired  but  which  still  needed 
a  leader  to  voice  its  aspirations.  This  spokesman 
the  convention  now  found  in  William  Jennings 
Bryan,  to  whom  after  a  few  sentences  Senator 
Jones  yielded  the  floor. 

Bryan  appeared  in  Chicago  as  a  member  of 
the  contesting  silver  delegation  from  Nebraska.  A 
young  man,  barely  thirty-six  years  old,  he  had 
already  become  a  well-known  figure  in  the  West, 
where  for  years  he  had  been  expounding  the  doc- 
trine of  free  silver.  A  native  of  Illinois,  whither  his 
father  had  come  from  Culpeper  County,  Virginia, 
Bryan  had  grown  up  on  a  farm.  His  father's 
means  had  been  ample  to  afford  him  a  good  educa- 
tion, which  he  completed,  so  far  as  schooling  was 
concerned,  at  Illinois  College,  Jacksonville,  and  at 
the  Union  College  of  Law  in  Chicago.  While  in 
Chicago  Bryan  was  employed  in  the  law  office  of 


178  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

Lyman  Trumbull,  one  of  the  stanchest  represent- 
atives of  independence  in  politics  —  an  independ- 
ence which  had  caused  him  to  break  with  the  Demo- 
cratic party  over  the  slavery  issue,  and  which,  as 
expressed  in  his  vote  against  the  impeachment  of 
President  Johnson,  had  resulted  in  his  retirement 
to  private  life.  To  the  young  law  student  Trum- 
bull took  a  particular  fancy,  and  his  dominating 
personality  exerted  an  abiding  influence  over  the 
character  and  career  of  his  protege. 

After  a  brief  period  of  law  practice  in  Jackson- 
ville, Illinois,  Bryan  removed  with  his  family  to 
Lincoln,  Nebraska.  The  legal  profession  never 
held  great  attraction  for  him,  despite  the  encour- 
agement and  assistance  of  his  wife,  who  herself  took 
up  the  study  of  law  after  her  marriage  and  was  ad- 
mitted to  the  bar.  Public  questions  and  politics 
held  greater  interest  for  the  young  man,  who  had 
already,  in  his  college  career,  shown  his  ability  as 
an  orator.  Nebraska  offered  the  opportunity  he 
craved.  At  the  Democratic  state  convention  in 
Omaha  in  1888  he  made  a  speech  on  the  tariff 
which  gave  him  immediately  a  state-wide  reputa- 
tion as  an  orator  and  expounder  of  public  issues. 
He  took  an  active  part  in  the  campaign  of  that 
year,  and  in  1889  was  offered,  but  declined,  the 


WILLIAM  JENNINGS  BRYAN 
Photograph  by  Pach  Bros.,  New  York,  1896. 


THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

Lyman  Trumbull,  one  of  the  stanchest  represent 
atives  of  indepe>  a  politics  —  an  indcpend 

ence  which  h  >.l  him  to  break  with  the  Dem* 

cratic  p  lavery  issue,  and  which, 

express*  vote  agaii  ient 

>hnson,  had  re^  his  retireir 

ife.     To  the  young  law  student  Trum- 
nd  his  dominating 

onality  influence  over  the 

v.i.-ia 

pfcj  .;•,„/• 

ville,  Illinois,  Bryan  removed  with/his  family  to 
Lincoln,  Nebraska.  The  legal  profession  never 
held  great  attraction  for  him,  despite  the  encour- 
agement and  assistance  of  his  wife,  who  herself  took 
up  the  study  of  law  after  her  marriage  and  was  ad- 
mitted to  the  bar.  Public  questions  and  politics 
held  greater  interest  for  the  young  man,  who  had 
already,  in  his  college  career,  ghown  his  ability  as 
an  orator.  Nebraska  offered  >rtumty  he 

craved.  At  the  Democratic  state  convention  in 
Omaha  in  1888  he  made  a  speeo  lie  tariff 

which  gave  him  immediately  a  state-wide  reputa- 
tion as  an  orator  and  expounder  of  public  issues. 
He  took  an  active  part  in  the  campaign  of  that 
year,  and  in  1889  was  offered,  but  declined,  the 


THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  STANDARDS     179 

nomination  for  lieutenant  governor  on  the  Demo- 
cratic ticket.  In  1890  he  won  election  to  Congress 
by  a  majority  of  seven  thousand  in  a  district  which 
two  years  before  had  returned  a  Republican,  and  this 
he  accomplished  in  spite  of  the  neglect  of  party 
managers  who  regarded  the  district  as  hopeless. 
In  Congress  he  became  a  member  of  the  Committee 
on  Ways  and  Means.  On  the  floor  of  the  House  his 
formal  speeches  on  the  tariff ,  a  topic  to  which  noth- 
ing new  could  be  brought,  commanded  the  atten- 
tion of  one  of  the  most  critical  and  blase  audiences 
of  the  world.  The  silver  question,  which  was  the 
principal  topic  before  Congress  at  the  following 
session,  afforded  a  fresher  field  for  his  oratory;  in- 
deed, Bryan  was  the  principal  aid  to  Bland  both 
as  speaker  and  parliamentarian  in  the  old  lead- 
er's monetary  campaign.  When  Bryan  sat  down 
after  a  three-hour  speech  in  which  he  attacked 
the  gold  standard,  a  colleague  remarked,  "It  ex- 
hausts the  subject."  In  1894  a  tidal  wave  of  Re- 
publicanism destroyed  Bryan's  chances  of  being 
elected  United  States  Senator,  a  consummation  for 
which  he  had  been  laboring  on  the  stump  and,  for  a 
brief  period,  as  editor  of  the  Omaha  World-Herald. 
He  continued,  however,  to  urge  the  silver  cause  in 
preparation  for  the  presidential  campaign  of  1896. 


180  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

Taller  and  broader  than  most  men  and  of  more 
commanding  presence,  Bryan  was  a  striking  figure 
in  the  convention  hall.  He  wore  the  inevitable 
black  suit  of  the  professional  man  of  the  nineties, 
but  his  dress  did  not  seem  conventional:  his  black 
tie  sat  at  too  careless  an  angle;  his  black  hair  was  a 
little  too  long.  These  eccentricities  the  cartoonists 
seized  on  and  exaggerated  so  that  most  people  who 
have  not  seen  the  man  picture  Bryan,  not  as  a  de- 
termined looking  man  with  a  piercing  eye  and  tight- 
set  mouth,  but  as  a  grotesque  frock-coated  figure 
with  the  sombrero  of  a  cow-puncher  and  the  hair 
of  a  poet .  If  the  delegates  at  the  convention  noticed 
any  of  these  peculiarities  as  Bryan  arose  to  speak, 
they  soon  forgot  them.  His  undoubted  power 
to  carry  an  audience  with  him  was  never  better 
demonstrated  than  on  that  sweltering  July  day  in 
Chicago  when  he  stilled  the  tumult  of  a  seething 
mass  of  15,000  people  with  his  announcement  that 
he  came  to  speak  "in  defense  of  a  cause  as  holy  as 
the  cause  of  liberty  —  the  cause  of  humanity, "  and 
when  he  stirred  the  same  audience  to  frenzy  with 
his  closing  defiance  of  the  opponents  of  free  silver: 

If  they  say  bimetallism  is  good,  but  that  we  cannot  have 
it  until  other  nations  help  us,  we  reply  that,  instead  of 
having  a  gold  standard  because  England  has,  we  will 


THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  STANDARDS     181 

restore  bimetallism,  and  then  let  England  have  bimetal- 
lism because  the  United  States  has  it.  If  they  dare  to 
come  out  in  the  open  field  and  defend  the  gold  stand- 
ard as  a  good  thing,  we  will  fight  them  to  the  utter- 
most. Having  behind  us  the  producing  masses  of  this 
nation  and  the  world,  supported  by  the  commercial 
interests,  the  laboring  interests,  and  the  toilers  every- 
where, we  will  answer  their  demand  for  a  gold  standard 
by  saying  to  them:  You  shall  not  press  down  upon 
the  brow  of  labor  this  crown  of  thorns,  you  shall  not 
crucify  mankind  upon  a  cross  of  gold. 

Meeting  Senator  Hill's  careful  arguments  with 
a  clever  retort,  blunting  the  keenness  of  his  logic 
with  a  well-turned  period,  polished  to  perfection 
by  numerous  repetitions  before  all  sorts  of  audi- 
ences during  the  previous  three  or  four  years,  Bry- 
an held  the  convention  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand. 
The  leadership  which  had  hitherto  been  lacking 
was  now  found.  The  platform  as  reported  by  the 
committee  was  adopted  by  a  vote  of  more  than 
two  to  one;  and  the  convention,  but  for  the  opposi- 
tion of  Bryan  himself,  would  have  nominated  him 
on  the  spot.  The  next  day  it  took  but  five  ballots 
to  set  aside  all  the  favorite  sons,  including  the 
"Father  of  Free  Silver"  himself,  Richard  P.  Bland, 
and  to  make  Bryan  the  standard  bearer  of  the  party. 

Far  different  in  character  and  appearance  from 


182  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

the  Republican  group  which  had  assembled  in  the 
same  building  a  few  weeks  before,  was  the  Populist 
convention  which  met  in  St.  Louis  late  in  July. 
Many  of  the  1300  delegates  were  white-haired  and 
had  grown  old  in  the  service  of  reform  in  the  various 
independent  movements  of  preceding  years;  some 
of  them  had  walked  long  distances  to  save  railroad 
fare,  while  others  were  so  poor  that,  having  ex- 
hausted their  small  store  of  money  before  the  long- 
drawn-out  convention  adjourned,  they  suffered 
from  want  of  regular  sleeping  places  and  adequate 
food.  All  were  impressed  with  the  significance  of 
the  decision  they  must  make. 

Gone  were  the  hopes  of  the  past  months;  the 
Populist  party  would  not  sweep  into  its  ranks  all 
anti-monopolists  and  all  silverites  —  for  one  of  the 
old  parties  had  stolen  its  loudest  thunder!  It  was 
an  error  of  political  strategy  to  place  the  conven- 
tion after  those  of  the  two  great  parties  in  the 
expectation  that  both  would  stand  on  a  gold  plat- 
form. Now  it  was  for  these  delegates  to  decide 
whether  they  would  put  their  organization  behind 
the  Democratic  nominee  with  a  substantial  pros- 
pect of  victory,  or  preserve  intact  the  identity  of  the 
Populist  party,  split  the  silver  vote,  and  deliver 
over  the  election  to  a  gold  Republican. 


THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  STANDARDS     183 

The  majority  of  the  delegates,  believing  that  the 
Democratic  party  had  been  inoculated  with  the 
serum  of  reform,  were  ready  for  the  sake  of  a  prin- 
ciple to  risk  the  destruction  of  the  party  they  had 
labored  so  hard  to  build.  Senator  William  V.  Allen 
of  Nebraska  summed  up  the  situation  when  he  said: 

If  by  putting  a  third  ticket  in  the  field  you  would  de- 
feat free  coinage;  defeat  a  withdrawal  of  the  issue 
power  of  national  banks;  defeat  Government  owner- 
ship of  railroads,  telephones  and  telegraphs;  defeat 
an  income  tax  and  foist  gold  monometallism  and  high 
taxation  upon  the  people  for  a  generation  to  come, 
which  would  you  do?  ...  When  I  shall  go  back  to 
the  splendid  commonwealth  that  has  so  signally 
honored  me  beyond  my  merits,  I  want  to  be  able  to  say 
to  the  people  that  all  the  great  doctrines  we  have  advo- 
cated for  years,  have  been  made  possible  by  your  action. 
I  do  not  want  them  to  say  that  the  Populists  have  been 
advocates  of  reforms  when  they  could  not  be  accom- 
plished, but  when  the  first  ray  of  light  appeared  and 
the  people  were  looking  with  expectancy  and  with 
anxiety  for  relief,  the  party  was  not  equal  to  the  oc- 
casion; that  it  was  stupid;  it  was  blind;  it  kept  "the 
middle  of  the  road,"  and  missed  the  golden  opportunity. 

Although  most  of  the  members  of  the  convention 
were  ready  to  cooperate  with  the  Democrats,  there 
was  a  very  strong  f  eeling  that  something  should  be 
done,  if  possible,  to  preserve  the  identity  of  the 


184  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

Populist  party  and  to  safeguard  its  future.  An 
active  minority,  moreover,  was  opposed  to  any 
sort  of  fusion  or  cooperation.  This  "  middle-of-the- 
road"  group  included  some  Western  leaders  of 
prominence,  such  as  Peffer  and  Donnelly,  but  its 
main  support  came  from  the  Southern  delegates. 
To  them  an  alliance  with  the  Democratic  party 
meant  a  surrender  to  the  enemy,  to  an  enemy  with 
whom'  they  had  been  struggling  for  four  years  for 
the  control  of  their  state  and  local  governments. 
Passionately  they  pleaded  with  the  convention  to 
save  them  from  such  a  calamity.  Well  they  knew 
that  small  consideration  would  be  given  to  those 
who  had  dared  stand  up  and  oppose  the  ruling 
aristocracy  of  the  South,  who  had  even  shaken  the 
Democratic  grip  upon  the  governments  of  some  of 
the  States.  Further,  a  negro  delegate  from  Georgia 
portrayed  the  disaster  which  would  overwhelm  the 
political  aspirations  of  his  people  if  the  Populist 
party,  which  alone  had  given  them  full  fellowship, 
should  surrender  to  the  Democrats. 

The  advocates  of  fusion  won  their  first  victory  in 
the  election  of  Senator  Allen  as  permanent  chair- 
man, by  a  vote  of  758  to  564.  As  the  nomina- 
tion of  Bryan  for  President  was  practically  a  fore- 
gone conclusion,  the  "middle-of-the-road"  element 


concentrated  its  energies  on  preventing  the  nomi- 
nation of  Arthur  Sewall  of  Maine,  the  choice  of  the 
Democracy,  for  Vice-President.  The  convention 
was  persuaded,  by  a  narrow  margin,  to  take  the 
unusual  step  of  selecting  the  candidate  for  Vice- 
President  before  the  head  of  the  ticket  was  chosen. 
On  the  first  ballot  Sewall  received  only  257  votes, 
while  469  were  cast  for  Thomas  Watson  of  Georgia. 
Watson,  who  was  then  nominated  by  acclamation, 
was  a  country  editor  who  had  made  himself  a  force 
in  the  politics  of  his  own  State  and  had  served  the 
Populist  cause  conspicuously  in  Congress.  Two 
motives  influenced  the  convention  in  this  proce- 
dure. As  a  bank  president,  a  railroad  director,  and 
an  employer  of  labor  on  a  large  scale,  Sewall  was 
felt  to  be  utterly  unsuited  to  carry  the  standard 
of  the  People's  Party.  More  effective  than  this 
feeling,  however,  was  the  desire  to  do  something  to 
preserve  the  identity  of  the  party,  to  show  that  it 
had  not  wholly  surrendered  to  the  Democrats.  It 
was  a  compromise,  moreover,  which  was  probably 
necessary  to  prevent  a  bolt  of  the  "middle-of-the- 
road"  element  and  the  nomination  of  an  entirely 
independent  ticket. 

Even  with  this  concession  the  Southern  delegates 
continued  their  opposition  to  fusion.     Bryan  was 


186  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

placed  in  nomination,  quite  appropriately,  by  Gen- 
eral Weaver,  who  again  expressed  the  sense  of  the 
convention:  "After  due  consideration,  in  which 
I  have  fully  canvassed  every  possible  phase  of 
the  subject,  I  have  failed  to  find  a  single  good 
reason  to  justify  us  in  placing  a  third  ticket  in  the 
field.  ...  I  would  not  endorse  the  distinguished 
gentleman  named  at  Chicago.  I  would  nominate 
him  outright,  and  make  him  our  own,  and  then 
share  justly  and  rightfully  in  his  election."  The 
irreconcilables,  nearly  all  from  the  South  and  in- 
cluding a  hundred  delegates  from  Texas,  voted  for 
S.  F.  Norton  of  Chicago,  who  received  321  votes  as 
against  1042  for  Bryan. 

Because  of  the  electoral  system,  the  agreement 
of -two  parties  to  support  the  same  candidate  for 
President  could  have  no  effect,  unless  arrangements 
were  made  for  fusion  within  the  States.  An  ad- 
dress issued  by  the  executive  committee  of  the  na- 
tional committee  of  the]_People's  Party  during  the 
course  of  the  campaign  outlined  the  method  of 
uniting  "the  voters  of  the  country  against  Mc- 
Kinley,"  and  of  overcoming  the  "obstacles  and 
embarrassments  which,  if  the  Democratic  party 
had  put  the  cause  first  and  party  second, "  would 
not  have  been  encountered:  "This  could  be 


THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  STANDARDS     187 

accomplished  only  by  arranging  for  a  division  of  the 
electoral  votes  in  every  State  possible,  securing  so 
many  electors  for  Bryan  and  Watson  and  conced- 
ing so  many  to  Bryan  and  Sewall.  At  the  opening 
of  the  campaign  this,  under  the  circumstances, 
seemed  the  wisest  course  for  your  committee,  and 
it  is  clearer  today  than  ever  that  it  was  the  only 
safe  and  wise  course  if  your  votes  were  to  be  cast 
and  made  effective  for  the  relief  of  an  oppressed 
and  outraged  people.  Following  this  line  of  policy 
your  committee  has  arranged  electoral  tickets  in 
three-fourths  of  the  States  and  will  do  all  in  its 
power  to  make  the  same  arrangements  in  all  of 
the  States." 

The  committee  felt  it  necessary  to  warn  the 
people  of  the  danger  of  "a  certain  portion  of  the 
rank  and  file  of  the  People's  Party  being  misled  by 
so-called  leaders,  who,  for  reasons  best  known  to 
themselves,  or  for  want  of  reason,  are  advising 
voters  to  rebel  against  the  joint  electoral  tickets 
and  put  up  separate  electoral  tickets,  or  to  with- 
hold their  support  from  the  joint  electoral  tickets." 
Such  so-called  leaders  were  said  to  be  aided  and 
abetted  by  "Democrats  of  the  revenue  stripe,  who 
are  not  yet  weaned  from  the  flesh-pots  of  Egypt," 
and  by  Republican  "goldbugs  "  who  in  desperation 


188  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

were  seizing  upon  every  straw  to  prevent  fusion 
and  so  to  promote  their  own  chances  of  success. 

In  the  North  and  West,  where  the  Populist  had 
been  fusing  with  the  Democrats  off  and  on  for 
several  years,  the  combinations  were  arranged  with 
little  difficulty.  In  apportioning  the  places  on  the 
electoral  tickets  the  strength  of  the  respective 
parties  was  roughly  represented  by  the  number  of 
places  assigned  to  each.  Usually  it  was  under- 
stood that  all  the  electors,  if  victorious,  would  vote 
for  Bryan,  while  the  Democrats  would  cast  their 
second  place  ballots  for  Sewall  and  the  Populists 
for  Watson. 

In  the  South  much  more  difficulty  was  experi- 
enced in  arranging  fusion  tickets,  and  the  spectacle 
of  Populists  cooperating  with  Republicans  in  state 
elections  and  with  Democrats  in  the  national  elec- 
tion illustrated  the  truth  of  the  adage  that  "poli- 
tics makes  strange  bedfellows."  Only  in  Arkan- 
sas, Kentucky,  Louisiana,  Missouri,  and  North 
Carolina,  of  the  Southern  States,  were  joint  electo- 
ral tickets  finally  agreed  upon.  In  Tennessee  the 
Populists  offered  to  support  the  Democratic  elec- 
tors if  they  would  all  promise  to  vote  for  Watson,  a 
proposal  which  was  naturally  declined.  In  Florida 
the  chairman  of  the  state  committee  of  the  People's 


THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  STANDARDS     189 

Party,  went  so  far  on  the  eve  of  the  election  as  to 
advise  all  members  of  the  party  to  vote  for  Mc- 
Kinley;  and  in  Texas  there  was  an  organized  bolt 
of  a  large  part  of  the  Populists  to  the  Republican 
party,  notwithstanding  its  gold  standard  and  pro- 
tective tariff  platform. 

No  campaign  since  that  of  1860  was  so  hotly  and 
bitterly  contested  as  the  "  Battle  of  the  Standards  " 
in  1896.  The  Republicans  broke  all  previous 
records  in  the  amount  of  printed  matter  which  they 
scattered  broadcast  over  the  country.  Money  was 
freely  spent.  McKinley  remained  at  his  home  in 
Canton,  Ohio,  and  received,  day  after  day,  delega- 
tions of  pilgrims  come  to  harken  to  his  words  of 
wisdom,  which  were  then,  through  the  medium 
of  the  press,  presented  to  similar  groups  from 
Maine  to  California.  For  weeks,  ten  to  twenty- 
five  thousand  people  a  day  sought  "the  shrine  of 
the  golden  calf." 

In  the  meantime  Bryan,  as  the  Democrat-Popu- 
list candidate,  toured  the  country,  traveling  over 
thirteen  thousand  miles,  reaching  twenty-nine 
States,  and  addressing  millions  of  voters.  It  was 
estimated,  for  instance,  that  in  the  course  of  his 
tour  of  West  Virginia  at  least  half  the  electorate 
must  have  heard  his  voice.  Most  of  the  influential 


190  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

newspapers  were  opposed  to  Bryan,  but  his  tours 
and  meetings  and  speeches  had  so  much  news  value 
that  they  received  the  widest  publicity.  As  the 
campaign  drew  to  a  close,  it  tended  more  and  more 
to  become  a  class  contest.  That  it  was  so  con- 
ceived by  the  Populist  executive  committee  is 
apparent  from  one  of  its  manifestoes: 

There  are  but  two  sides  in  the  conflict  that  is  being 
waged  in  this  country  today.  On  the  one  side  are  the 
allied  hosts  of  monopolies,  the  money  power,  great 
trusts  and  railroad  corporations,  who  seek  the  enact- 
ment of  laws  to  benefit  them  and  impoverish  the  people. 
On  the  other  side  are  the  farmers,  laborers,  merchants, 
and  all  others  who  produce  wealth  and  bear  the  bur- 
dens of  taxation.  The  one  represents  the  wealthy  and 
powerful  classes  who  want  the  control  of  the  Govern- 
ment to  plunder  the  people.  The  other  represents  the 
people,  contending  for  equality  before  the  law,  and  the 
rights  of  man.  Between  these  two  there  is  no  middle 
ground. 

When  the  smoke  of  battle  cleared  away  the  elec- 
tion returns  of  1896  showed  that  McKinley  had 
received  600,000  more  popular  votes  than  Bryan 
and  would  have  271  electoral  votes  to  176  for  the 
Democrat-Populist  candidate.  West  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi River  the  cohorts  of  Bryan  captured  the 
electoral  vote  in  every  State  except  California, 


THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  STANDARDS     191 

Minnesota,  North  Dakota,  Iowa,  and  Oregon.  The 
South  continued  its  Democratic  solidity,  except 
that  West  Virginia  and  Kentucky  went  to  McKin- 
ley.  All  the  electoral  votes  of  the  region  east  of 
the  Mississippi  and  north  of  Mason's  and  Dixon's 
line  were  Republican.  The  old  Northwest,  to- 
gether with  Iowa,  Minnesota,  and  North  Dakota, 
a  region  which  had  been  the  principal  theater  of  the 
Granger  movement  a  generation  before,  now  joined 
forces  with  the  conservative  and  industrial  East  to 
defeat  a  combination  of  the  South  with  the  newer 
agrarian  and  mining  frontiers  of  the  West. 

The  People's  Party  had  staked  all  on  a  throw  of 
the  dice  and  had  lost.  It  had  given  its  life  as  a 
political  organization  to  further  the  election  of 
Bryan,  and  he  had  not  been  elected.  Its  hope  for 
independent  existence  was  now  gone;  its  strength 
was  considerably  less  in  1896  than  it  had  been  in 
1892  and  1894. x  The  explanation  would  seem  to 

1  Of  the  6,509,000  votes  which  Bryan  received,  about  4,669,000  were 
cast  for  the  fusion  electoral  tickets.  In  only  seven  of  the  fusion  States 
is  it  possible  to  distinguish  between  Democrat  and  Populist  votes;  the 
totals  here  are  1,499,000  and  93,000  respectively.  The  fusion  Popu- 
list vote  of  45,000  was  essential  for  the  success  of  the  Bryan  electors  in 
Kansas;  and  in  California  the  similar  vote  of  22,000,  added  to  that  of 
the  Democrats,  gave  Bryan  one  of  the  electors.  In  no  other  State  in 
this  group  did  the  Populist  vote  have  any  effect  upon  the  result.  The 
part  played  by  the  People's  party  in  the  other  twenty-two  of  the  fusion 


192  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

be,  in  part  at  least,  that  the  People's  Party  was 
"bivertebrate  as  well  as  bimetallic."  It  was  com- 
posed of  men  who  not  long  since  had  other  political 
affiliations,  who  had  left  one  party  for  the  sake  of 
the  cause,  and  who  consequently  did  not  find  it 
difficult  to  leave  another  for  the  same  reason.  In 


States  is  difficult  to  determine;  in  some  cases,  however,  the  situation  is 
revealed  in  the  results  of  state  elections.  The  best  example  of  this  is 
North  Carolina,  where  the  Democrat-Populist  electors  had  a  major- 
ity of  19,000,  while  at  the  same  election  fusion  between  Republicans 
and  Populists  for  all  state  officers  except  governor  and  lieutenant 
governor  was  victorious.  The  Populist  candidate  for  governor  re- 
ceived about  31,000  votes  and  the  Republican  was  elected.  It  is 
evident  that  the  third  party  held  the  balance  of  power  in  North  Caro- 
lina. The  Populist  votes  were  probably  essential  for  the  fusion  vic- 
tories in  Idaho,  Montana,  Nebraska,  and  Washington;  but,  as  there 
was  fusion  on  state  tickets  also,  it  is  impossible  to  estimate  the  part 
played  by  the  respective  parties.  The  total  Populist  vote  in  the  ten 
States  in  which  there  were  independent  Democratic  and  Populist 
electoral  tickets  was  122,000  (of  which  80,000  were  cast  in  Texas  and 
24,000  in  Alabama)  and  as  none  of  the  ten  were  close  States  the  failure 
to  agree  on  electoral  tickets  had  no  effect  on  the  result.  The  "  middle- 
of-the-road"  Populist  votes,  in  States  where  there  were  also  fusion 
tickets  amounted  to  only  8000  —  of  which  6000  were  cast  in  Pennsyl- 
vania and  1000  each  in  Illinois  and  Kansas. 

The  Populist  vote  as  a  whole  was  much  larger  than  223,000  —  the 
total  usually  given  in  the  tables  —  for  this  figure  does  not  include  the 
vote  in  the  twenty-two  fusion  States  in  which  the  ballots  were  not 
separately  counted.  This  is  apparent  from  the  fact  that  the  twenty- 
seven  electoral  votes  from  ten  States  which  were  cast  for  Watson  came, 
with  one  exception,  from  States  in  which  no  separate  Populist  vote 
was  recorded.  It  is  evident,  nevertheless,  from  the  figures  in  States 
where  comparisons  are  possible,  that  the  party  had  lost  ground. 


THE  BATTLE  OF  THE  STANDARDS     193 

the  West  large  numbers  of  former  Populists  un- 
doubtedly went  over  completely  to  the  Democracy, 
even  when  they  had  the  opportunity  of  voting  for 
the  same  Bryan  electors  under  a  Populist  label. 
In  the  South  many  members  of  the  party,  disgusted 
at  the  predicament  in  which  they  found  themselves, 
threw  in  their  lot  with  the  Republicans.  The  cap- 
ture of  the  Democracy  by  the  forces  of  free  silver 
gave  the  death  blow  to  Populism. 


CHAPTER  XIH 

THE   LEAVEN   OF  RADICALISM 

THE  People's  Party  was  mortally  stricken  by  the 
events  of  1896.  Most  of  the  cohorts  which  had 
been  led  into  the  camp  of  Democracy  were  there- 
alter  beyond  the  control  of  their  leaders;  and  even 
the  remnant  that  still  called  itself  Populist  was 
divided  into  two  factions.  In  1900  the  radical 
group  refused  to  endorse  the  Fusionists*  nomina- 
tion of  Bryan  and  ran  an  independent  ticket  headed 
by  Wharton  Barker  of  Pennsylvania  and  that  in- 
veterate rebel,  Ignatius  Donnelly.  This  ticket, 
however,  received  only  50,000  votes,  nearly  one-half 
of  which  came  from  Texas.  When  the  Democrats 
nominated  Judge  Alton  B.  Parker  of  New  York  in 
1904,  the  Populists  formally  dissolved  the  alliance 
with  the  Democracy  and  nominated  Thomas  E. 
Watson  of  Georgia  for  President.  By  this  defec- 
tion the  Democrats  may  have  lost  something;  but 
the  Populists  gained  little.  Most  of  the  radicals 

194 


THE  LEAVEN  OF  RADICALISM         195 

who  deserted  the  Democracy  at  this  time  went  over 
to  Roosevelt,  the  Republican  candidate.  In  1908 
the  Populist  vote  fell  to  29,000;  in  1912  the  party 
gave  up  the  ghost  in  a  thinly- attended- convention 
which  neither  made  nominations  of  its  own  nor 
endorsed  any  other  candidate.  In  Congress  the 
forces  of  Populism  dwindled  rapidly,  from  the  27 
members  of  1897  to  but  10  in  1899,  and  none  at  all 
in  1903. 

The  men  who  had  been  leaders  in  the  heyday  of 
Populism  retired  from  national  prominence  to  mere 
local  celebrity.  Donnelly  died  in  1901,  leaving  a 
picturesque  legacy  of  friendships  and  animosities,  of 
literary  controversy  and  radical  political  theory. 
Weaver  remained  with  the  fusion  Populists  through 
the  campaign  of  1900;  but  by  1904  he  had  gone  over 
to  the  Democratic  party.  The  erstwhile  candidate 
for  the  presidency  was  content  to  serve  as  mayor 
of  the  small  town  of  Colfax,  Iowa,  where  he  made 
his  home  until  his  death  in  1912,  respected  by  his 
neighbors  and  forgotten  by  the  world.  Peffer,  at 
the  expiration  of  his  term  in  the  Senate,  ran  an 
unsuccessful  tilt  for  the  governorship  of  Kansas  on 
the  Prohibition  ticket.  In  1900  he  returned  to 
the  comfort  of  the  Republican  fold,  to  become  an 
ardent  supporter  of  McKinley  and  Roosevelt. 


196  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

But  the  defection  and  death  of  Populist  leaders, 
the  collapse  of  the  party,  and  the  disintegration  of 
the  alliances  could  not  stay  the  farmers'  move- 
ment. It  ebbed  for  a  time,  just  as  at  the  end  of  the 
Granger  period,  but  it  was  destined  to  rise  again. 
The  unprecedented  prosperity,  especially  among 
the  farmers,  which  began  with  the  closing  years  of 
the  nineteenth  century  and  has  continued  with 
little  reaction  down  to  the  present  has  removed 
many  causes  for  agrarian  discontent;  but  some  of 
the  old  evils  are  left,  and  fresh  grievances  have 
come  to  the  front.  Experience  taught  the  farmer 
one  lesson  which  he  has  never  forgotten:  that 
whether  prosperous  or  not,  he  can  and  must  pro- 
mote his  welfare  by  organization.  So  it  is  that,  as 
one  association  or  group  of  associations  declines, 
others  arise.  In  some  States,  where  the  Grange 
has  survived  or  has  been  reintroduced,  it  is  once 
more  the  leading  organ  of  the  agricultural  class. 
Elsewhere  other  organizations,  sometimes  confined 
to  a  single  State,  sometimes  transcending  state 
lines,  hold  the  farmers'  allegiance  more  or  less 
firmly;  and  an  attempt  is  now  being  made  to  unite 
all  of  these  associations  in  an  American  Federation 
of  Farmers. 

Until  recently  these  orders  have  devoted  their 


THE  LEAVEN  OF  RADICALISM         197 

energies  principally  to  promoting  the  social  and 
intellectual  welfare  of  the  farmer  and  to  business 
cooperation,  sometimes  on  a  large  scale.  But,  as 
soon  as  an  organization  has  drawn  into  its  ranks  a 
considerable  proportion  of  the  farmers  of  a  State, 
especially  in  the  West,  the  temptation  to  use  its 
power  in  the  field  of  politics  is  almost  irresistible. 
At  first,  political  activity  is  usually  confined  to 
declarations  in  favor  of  measures  believed  to  be  in 
the  interests  of  the  farmers  as  a  class;  but  from 
this  it  is  only  a  short  step  to  the  support  of  candi- 
dates for  office  who  are  expected  to  work  for  those 
measures;  and  thence  the  gradation  is  easy  to  actual 
nominations  by  the  order  or  by  a  farmers'  conven- 
tion which  it  has  called  into  being.  With  direct 
primaries  in  operation  in  most  of  the  Western 
States,  these  movements  no  longer  culminate  in  the 
formation  of  the  third  party  but  in  ambitious  efforts 
to  capture  the  dominant  party  in  the  State.  Thus 
in  Wisconsin  the  president  of  the  state  union  of  the 
American  Society  of  Equity,  a  farmers'  organiza- 
tion which  has  heretofore  been  mainly  interested  in 
cooperative  buying  and  selling,  was  recently  put 
forward  by  a  "Farmers  and  Laborers  Conference" 
as  candidate  for  the  nomination  for  governor  on 
the  Republican  ticket  and  had  the  active  support 


198  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

of  the  official  organ  of  the  society.  In  North 
Dakota,  the  Non-Partisan  League,  a  farmers'  or- 
ganization avowedly  political  in  its  purposes,  cap- 
tured the  Republican  party  a  few  years  ago  and 
now  has  complete  control  of  the  state  government. 
The  attempt  of  the  League  to  seize  the  reins  in 
Minnesota  has  been  unsuccessful  as  yet,  but  Demo- 
cratic and  Republican  managers  are  very  much 
alarmed  at  its  growing  power.  The  organized 
farmers  are  once  more  a  power  in  Western  politics. 
It  is  not,  however,  by  votes  cast  and  elections 
won  or  by  the  permanence  of  parties  and  organiza- 
tions that  the  political  results  of  the  agrarian  cru- 
sade are  to  be  measured .  The  People's  Party  and  its 
predecessors,  with  the  farmers'  organizations  which 
supported  them,  professed  to  put  measures  before 
men  and  promulgated  definite  programs  of  legisla- 
tion. Many  of  the  proposals  in  these  programs 
which  were  ridiculed  at  the  time  have  long  since 
passed  beyond  the  stage  of  speculation  and  discus- 
sion. Regulation  of  railroad  charges  by  national  and 
state  government,  graduated  income  taxes,  popular 
election  of  United  States  Senators,  a  parcels  post, 
postal  savings  banks,  and  rural  free  delivery  of  mail 
are  a  few  of  these  once  visionary  demands  which 
have  been  satisfied  by  Federal  law  and  constitutional 


THE  LEAVEN  OF  RADICALISM         199 

amendment.  Anti-trust  legislation  has  been  en- 
acted to  meet  the  demand  for  the  curbing  of  mo- 
nopolies; and  the  Federal  land  bank  system  which 
has  recently  gone  into  operation  is  practically  the 
proposal  of  the  Northwestern  Alliance  for  govern- 
ment loans  to  farmers,  with  the  greenback  feature 
eliminated.  Even  the  demand  for  greater  volume 
and  flexibility  of  currency  has  been  met,  though  in 
ways  quite  different  from  those  proposed  by  the 
farmers. T 

In  general  it  may  be  said  that  the  farmers'  or- 
ganizations and  parties  stood  for  increased  govern- 
mental activity;  they  scorned  the  economic  and 
political  doctrine  of  laissezfaire;  they  believed  that 
the  people's  governments  could  and  should  be  used 
in  many  ways  for  promoting  the  welfare  of  the 
people,  for  assuring  social  justice,  and  for  restoring 

1  In  July,  1894,  when  the  People's  Party  was  growing  rapidly,  the 
editor  of  the  Review  of  Reviews  declared:  "Whether  the  Populist 
party  is  to  prove  itself  capable  of  amalgamating  a  great  national 
political  organization  or  whether  its  work  is  to  be  done  through  a 
leavening  of  the  old  parties  to  a  more  or  less  extent  with  its  doctrines 
and  ideas,  remains  to  be  seen.  At  present  its  influence  evidently  is 
that  of  a  leavening  ingredient."  The  inclusion  of  the  income  tax  in 
the  revenue  bill  put  through  by  the  Democratic  majority  in  Congress 
was  described  as  "  a  mighty  manifestation  of  the  working  of  the  Popu- 
list leaven";  and  it  was  pointed  out  that  "the  Populist  leaven  in  the 
direction  of  free  silver  at  the  ratio  of  16  to  1  is  working  yet  more  deeply 
and  ominously."  The  truth  of  the  last  assertion  was  demonstrated 
two  years  later. 


200  THE  AGRARIAN  CRUSADE 

or  preserving  economic  as  well  as  political  equality. 
They  were  pioneers  in  this  field  of  social  politics, 
but  they  did  not  work  alone.  Independent  re- 
formers, either  singly  or  in  groups,  labor  organiza- 
tions and  parties,  and  radicals  everywhere  cooper- 
ated with  them.  Both  the  old  parties  were  split 
into  factions  by  this  progressive  movement;  and  in 
1912  a  Progressive  party  appeared  on  the  scene  and 
leaped  to  second  place  in  its  first  election,  only  to 
vanish  from  the  stage  in  1916  when  both  the  old 
parties  were  believed  to  have  become  progressive. 

The  two  most  hopeful  developments  in  American 
politics  during  recent  years  have  been  the  progres- 
sive movement,  with  its  program  of  social  justice, 
and  the  growth  of  independent  voting  —  both 
developments  made  possible  in  large  part  by  the 
agrarian  crusade.  Perhaps  the  most  significant 
contribution  of  the  farmers'  movement  to  American 
politics  has  been  the  training  of  the  agricultural 
population  to  independent  thought  and  action.  No 
longer  can  a  political  party,  regardless  of  its  plat- 
form and  candidates,  count  on  the  farmer  vote  as  a 
certainty.  The  resolution  of  the  Farmers'  Alliance 
of  Kansas  "that  we  will  no  longer  divide  on  party 
lines  and  will  only  cast  our  votes  for  candidates  of 
the  people,  by  the  people,  and  for  the  people, "  was 


THE  LEAVEN  OF  RADICALISM         201 

a  declaration  of  a  political  independence  which  the 
farmers  throughout  the  West  have  maintained  and 
strengthened.  Each  successive  revolt  took  addi- 
tional voters  from  the  ranks  of  the  old  parties;  and, 
once  these  ties  were  severed,  even  though  the  wan- 
derers might  return,  their  allegiance  could  be  re- 
tained only  by  a  due  regard  for  their  interests  and 
desires. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 

THE  sources  for  the  history  of  the  agrarian  crusade 
are  to  be  found  largely  in  contemporary  newspapers, 
periodical  articles,  and  the  pamphlet  proceedings  of 
national  and  state  organizations,  which  are  too  numer- 
ous to  permit  of  their  being  listed  here.  The  issues  of 
such  publications  as  the  Tribune  Almanac,  the  Annual 
Cyclopedia  (1862-1903),  and  Edward  McPherson's 
Handbook  of  Politics  (1868-1894)  contain  platforms, 
election  returns,  and  other  useful  material;  and  some 
of  the  important  documents  for  the  Granger  period  are 
in  volume  x  of  the  Documentary  History  of  American 
Industrial  Society  (1911),  edited  by  John  R.  Commons. 
When  each  wave  of  the  movement  for  agricultural 
organization  was  at  its  crest,  enterprising  publishers 
seized  the  opportunity  to  bring  out  books  dealing  with 
the  troubles  of  the  farmers,  the  proposed  remedies,  and 
the  origin  and  growth  of  the  orders.  These  works, 
hastily  compiled  for  sale  by  agents,  are  partisan  and 
unreliable,  but  they  contain  material  not  elsewhere 
available,  and  they  help  the  reader  to  appreciate  the 
spirit  of  the  movement.  Books  of  this  sort  for  the 
Granger  period  include:  Edward  W.  Martin's  (pseud. 
of  J.  D.  McCabe)  History  of  the  Grange  Movement 
(1874),  Jonathan  Periam's  The  Groundswell  (1874), 
Oliver  H.  Kelley's  Origin  and  Progress  of  the  Order  of 

203 


204  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 

>> 

the  Patrons  of  Husbandry  (1875),  and  Ezra  S.  Carr's 
The  Patrons  of  Husbandry  on  the  Pacific  Coast  (1875). 
Similar  works  induced  by  the  Alliance  movement  are: 
History  of  the  Farmers'  Alliance,  the  Agricultural  Wheel, 
etc.,  compiled  and  edited  by  the  St .  Louis  Journal  of 
Agriculture  (1890),  Labor  and  Capital,  Containing  an 
Account  of  the  Various  Organizations  of  Farmers,  Plant- 
ers, and  Mechanics  (1891),  edited  by  Emory  A.  Allen, 
W.  Scott  Morgan's  History  of  the  Wheel  and  Alliance 
and  the  Impending  Revolution  (1891),  H.  R.  Chamber- 
lain's The  Farmers'  Alliance  (1891),  The  Farmers'  Alli- 
ance History  and  Agricultural  Digest  (1891),  edited  by 
N.  A.  Dunning,  and  N.  B.  Ashby's  The  Riddle  of  the 
Sphinx  (1890).  Other  contemporary  books  dealing 
with  the  evils  of  which  the  farmers  complained  are: 
D.  C.  Cloud's  Monopolies  and  the  People  (1873),  Wil- 
liam A.  Peffer's  The  Farmer's  Side  (1891),  James  B. 
Weaver's  A  Call  to  Action  (1891),  Charles  H.  Otken's 
The  Ills  of  the  South  (1894),  Henry  D.  Lloyd's  Wealth 
against  Commonwealth  (1894),  and  William  H.  Harvey's 
Coin's  Financial  School  (1894). 

The  nearest  approach  to  a  comprehensive  account 
of  the  farmers'  movement  is  contained  in  Fred  E. 
Haynes's  Third  Party  Movements  Since  the  Civil  War, 
with  Special  Reference  to  Iowa  (1916) .  The  first  phase  of 
the  subject  is  treated  by  Solon  J.  Buck  in  The  Granger 
Movement  (1913),  which  •  contains  an  extensive  bibli- 
ography. Frank  L.  McVey's  The  Populist  Movement 
(1896)  is  valuable  principally  for  its  bibliography  of 
contemporary  material,'  especially  newspapers  and 
magazine  articles.  For  accounts  of  agrarian  activity 
in  the  individual  States,  the  investigator  turns  to  the 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE  205 

many  state  histories  without  much  satisfaction.  Nor 
can  he  find  monographic  studies  for  more  than  a  few 
States.  A.  E.  Paine's  The  Granger  Movement  in  Illi- 
nois (1904  University  of  Illinois  Studies,  vol.  I,  No. 
8)  and  Ellis  B.  Usher's  The  Greenback  Movement  of 
1875-1884  and  Wisconsin's  Part  in  It  (1911)  practically 
exhaust  the  list.  Elizabeth  N.  Barr's  The  Populist 
Uprising,  in  volume  n  of  William  E.  Connelley's  Stand- 
ard History  of  Kansas  (1918),  is  a  vivid  and  sympa- 
thetic but  uncritical  narrative.  Briefer  articles  have 
been  written  by  Melvin  J.  White,  Populism  in  Louisi- 
ana during  the  Nineties,  in  the  Mississippi  Valley  His- 
torical Review  (June,  1918),  and  by  Ernest  D.  Stewart, 
The  Populist  Party  in  Indiana  in  the  Indiana  Magazine 
of  History  (December,  1918).  Biographical  material 
on  the  Populist  leaders  is  also  scant.  For  Donnelly 
there  is  Everett  W.  Fish's  Donnelliana  (1892),  a  curi- 
ous eulogy  supplemented  by  "excerpts  from  the  wit, 
wisdom,  poetry  and  eloquence"  of  the  versatile  hero; 
and  a  life  of  General  Weaver  is  soon  to  be  issued  by  the 
State  Historical  Society  of  Iowa.  William  J.  Bryan's 
The  First  Battle  (1896)  and  numerous  biographies  of 
"the  Commoner"  treat  of  his  connection  with  the 
Populists  and  the  campaign  of  1896.  Herbert  Croly's 
Marcus  A.  Hanna  (1912)  should  also  be  consulted  in 
this  connection. 

Several  of  the  general  histories  of  the  United  States 
since  the  Civil  War  devote  considerable  space  to  vari- 
ous phases  of  the  farmers'  movement.  The  best  in 
this  respect  are  Charles  A.  Bear, d's  Contemporary  Ameri- 
can History  (1914)  and  Frederic  L.  Paxson's  The 
New  Nation  (1915).  Harry  Thurston  Peck's  Twenty 


206  BIBLIOGRAPEdCAL  NOTE 

Years  of  the  Republic,  1885-1905  (1906)  contains  an 
entertaining  account  of  Populism  and  the  campaign  of 
1896.  Pertinent  chapters  and  useful  bibliographies  will 
also  be  found  in  the  following  volumes  of  the  American 
Nation:  William  A.  Dunning's  Reconstruction,  Political 
and  Economic,  1865-1877  (1907),  Edwin  E.  Sparks's 
National  Development,  1877-1885  (1907),  and  David 
R.  Dewey's  National  Problems,  1885-1897  (1907). 


INDEX 


Adams,  C.  F.,  candidate  for 
presidential  nomination,  15 

Adams,  D.  W.,  Master  of  Na- 
tional Grange,  27 

Agricultural  Wheel,  116-17; 
see  also  National  Agricul- 
tural Wheel 

Aiken,  D.  W.,  on  executive  com- 
mittee of  National  Grange, 
27;  quoted,  61-62 

Alabama,  Grange  relief  sent  to, 
75 

Allen,  Judge  W.  V.,  sent  to 
United  States  Senate,  164- 
165,  184;  quoted,  183 

Alliance  movement,  see  Farm- 
ers' Alliance 

Altgeld,  J.  P.,  elected  Governor 
of  Illinois,  150 

American  Bimetallic  League, 
170 

American  Federation  of  Farm- 
ers, 196 

American  Society  of  Equity, 
197 

"American  System  of  Fi- 
nance," 80 

Anthony,  Susan  B.,  speaks  at 
National  party  convention, 
94 

Anti-Monopolist,  Donnelly 
starts  publication  of,  41; 
activity,  86 

Anti- Monopoly  Organization 
of  the  United  States,  con- 
vention at  Chicago  (1884), 
96;  see  also  Anti-Monopoly 
party 


Anti- Monopoly  party,  31; 
Donnelly  as  leader,  89,  41; 
antagonism  toward  rail- 
roads, 50 

Arkansas,  Agricultural  Wheel 
originates  in  Prairie  County, 
116;  Union  Labor  party  in, 
127;  fusion  tickets  (1896), 
188 

Banks  and  banking,  see  Finance 

Barker,  Wharton,  radical  Popu- 
list candidate  (1900),  194 

Barr,  E.  N.,  The  Populist  Up- 
rising, cited,  134  (note) 

"Battle  of  the  Standards," 
campaign  of  1896,  189 

Bland,  R.  P.,  Bryan  and,  179; 
"  Father  of  Free  Silver, "  181 

Brothers  of  Freedom,  116 

Brown,  B.  G.,  elected  Governor 
of  Missouri,  14;  candidate 
for  presidential  nomination, 
16 

Bryan,  W.  J.,  at  Democratic 
convention  (1896),  177;  life, 
177-78;  interest  in  politics, 
178;  editor  Omaha  World- 
Herald,  179;  in  Congress, 
179;  personal  appearance, 
180;  convention  speech 
quoted,  180-81;  nomination, 
181, 186;  and  People's  Party, 
186,  191;  campaign,  189-90; 
defeat,  190,  191 

Buchanan,  James,  and  Na- 
tional Greenback  party,  82, 
127 


207 


208 


INDEX 


Butler,  General  B.  F.,  and 
silver  question,  90;  presiden- 
tial nomination,  96-97 

California  and  Populist  party, 
151 

Gary,  S.  F.,  Independent  nomi- 
nee for  Vice-President  (1876), 
85 

Chambers,  B.  J.,  nominated 
for  Vice-President,  94 

Chase,  Solon,  on  inflation,  90- 
91 

Chicago,  Grange  established 
in,  6;  Independent  meeting 
(1876),  85;  National  party 
convention  (1880),  93-94; 
meeting  of  Northwestern 
Alliance  (1881),  119;  Demo- 
cratic convention  (1896), 
175-77,  180-81 

Cincinnati,  Liberal-Republi- 
can convention  (1872),  14, 
15;  convention  of  Citizens' 
Alliance  and  Knights  of 
Labor  (1891),  140 

Citizens'  Alliance,  140 

Civil  service,  Liberal  Repub- 
lican platform  on,  15;  de- 
mand for  reform  of,  35 

Civil  War,  agriculture  after,  19 

Clark,  J.  G.,  151;  People's 
Battle  Hymn,  148 

Cleveland,  Grover,  and  free 
silver,  169;  Tillman  and, 
169,  176 

Cleveland,  Independent  party 
convention  (1875),  82-83 

Colorado,  Populist  success 
(1892),  149;  Republican  in 
1894,  168 

Colored  Farmers'  Alliance,  123 

Columbus  (O.),  Grange  es- 
tablished in,  6;  National 
Labor  party  convention 
(1872),  80 

Congress,  agricultural  repre- 
sentation in,  24;  specie- 
resumption  act  (1875),  83, 


94;  Silver  Purchase  Act,  132, 
159-60,  165;  demonetizes  sil- 
ver (1873),  156-57;  Bland- 
Allison  act,  158,  159,  160, 
173 

Cooper,  Peter,  candidate  for 
Presidency,  84-85 

Cooperation,  65  et  seq.;  co- 
operative stores,  66-68; 
"Rochdale  plan,"  67-68, 
71;  Northwestern  Alliance 
and,  119 

Corning,  Cyrus,  134 

Corwin,  E.  S.,  John  Marshall 
and  the  Constitution,  cited, 
46  (note) 

Coxey,  J.  S.,  170 

"Crime  of '73,"  156 

Curtin,  A.  G.,  and  Liberal 
Republican  party,  15 

Curtis,  B.  R.,  51 

Daniel,  J.  W.,  at  Democratic 
convention  (1896),  175 

Davis,  Judge  David,  and  Lib- 
eral Republican  party,  15; 
candidate  for  presidential 
nomination,  15-16;  nomi- 
nated by  National  Labor 
party  (1872),  80;  considered 
as  candidate  by  National 
Greenback  party  (1876),  84; 
Senator,  87-88 

Democratic  party,  after  Civil 
War,  11-12;  and  Liberal 
Republicans,  16-17;  makes 
common  cause  with  new 
parties,  31;  in  Illinois  (1873), 
34;  attitude  on  currency 
question,  79;  firm  establish- 
ment of,  97-98,  125;  disap- 
pointment in,  126;  victory 
in  Nebraska  (1890),  138; 
platform  (1892),  146-47;  and 
Populist  party,  149-50,  153; 
and  free  silver,  158,  175  et 
seq.;  success  in  South  Caro- 
lina (1894),  169;  convention 
(1896),  175-77,  180-81 


INDEX 


209 


Detroit,  Greenback  conference 
(1875).  86 

Diggs,  Anna  L.,  134 

Dillaye,  S.  D.,  refuses  presi- 
dential nomination,  93 

Donnelly,  Ignatius,  18;  Anti- 
Monopolist  leader,  39,  41; 
life  and  character,  39-42; 
Facts  for  the  Grangers,  81;  on 
inflation,  81-82;  temporary 
chairman  of  National  Green- 
back convention  (1876),  83; 
heads  Populist  ticket  in 
Minnesota  (1892),  150;  op- 
ponent of  party  fusion,  170, 
184,  194;  death  (1901),  195 

East,  Grange  movement  re- 
tarded in,  26-27 

Elections,  State  elections 
(1877),  88  (note);  of  1878, 
90;  of  1880,  93-95;  of  1896, 
172-91;  of  1900,  194;  of 
1904,  194-95;  of  1908,  195 

England,  conflicting  interests 
with  United  States,  161 

Europe,  agricultural  condi- 
tions in  1893,  99 

Evarts,  W.  M.,  51 

Fairchild,  George  T.,  quoted, 
106 

Farmers'  Alliance,  111  et  seq.; 
bibliography,  204 

Farmers'  Alliance  of  Kansas, 
resolution,  200-01 

"Farmers  and  Laborers  Con- 
ference" makes  nomination 
for  Governor  in  Wisconsin, 
197 

Farmers'  and  Laborers'  Union 
of  America,  117,  122 

Farmers'  clubs,  organization 
of,  29-30 

Farmers'  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, 33-34 

Farmers'  Fourth  of  July  (1873), 
33 

14 


Farmers'  Mutual  Benefit  Asso- 
ciation, 123 

Farmers'  party,  31 

Farmers'  Union  of  Louisiana, 
115 

Fenton,  R.  E.,  and  Liberal 
Republican  party,  15 

Field,  General  J.  G.,  candidate 
for  Vice-President,  145,  147 

Finance,  panic  of  1873,  21,  81; 
farm  loan  banks,  21;  demand 
for  currency  reform,  35;  cur- 
rency inflation  and  Green- 
back movement,  77  et  seq., 
110;  "American  System  of 
Finance,"  80;  panic  of  1893, 
104;  mortgages,  105-07; 
press  comment  on  existing 
system,  108-09;  Southern 
Alliance  report  on  mone- 
tary system  (1889),  130-31; 
Northwestern  Alliance  pro- 
posals, 131;  monetary  planks 
in  Populist  platform  (1892), 
143;  Federal  land  bank  sys- 
tem, 199;  see  also  Gold 
standard,  Prices,  Silver 

Flagg,  W.  C.,  president  of 
Illinois  State  Farmers'  Asso- 
ciation, 36 

Florida,  Alliance  forms  Demo- 
cratic platform  in  (1890), 
133;  election  of  1896,  188- 
189 

Fredonia  (N.  Y.),  Grange  es- 
tablished in,  6 

Free  Trade  League,  leaders 
join  Liberal  Republicans,  14 

George,  Henry,  127 

George,  Milton,  founder  of 
National  Farmers'  Alliance, 
118 

Georgia,  Alliance  forms  Demo- 
cratic platform  in  (1890), 
133 

Godkin,  E.  L.,  14,  19 

Gold  standard,  party  plat- 
forms on,  146-47;  Congress 


210 


INDEX 


Gold  Standard — Continued 
authorizes,  156;  in  Republi- 
can platform  (1896),  174-75 

Grange  movement,  inception, 
1  et  seq. ;  at  flood  tide,  25  et 
seq.;  and  railroad  regulation, 
43  et  seq.;  collapse,  60  et  seq.; 
social  and  intellectual  stimu- 
lus from,  71-76;  ritual,  73- 
74;  bibliography,  203-04; 
sec  also  National  Grange  of 
the  Patrons  of  Husbandry 

Grant,  U.  S.,  and  spoils,  12; 
nomination  (1872),  16 

Greeley,  Horace,  joins  Liberal 
Republicans,  15;  nomina- 
tion for  President  (1872),  16, 
80;  campaign,  16-17;  Don- 
nelly supports,  41 

Greenback  Clubs,  86,  93 

Greenback  Labor  party,  re- 
form parties  merged  with, 
35;  National  party  called, 
89;  decline,  96,  127;  finan- 
cial demands,  155;  see  also 
National  party,  National 
Greenback  party 

Greenback  movement,  77  et 
seq.;  State  elections  (1877), 
88  (note) 

Gresham,  Judge  W.  Q.,  Popu- 
lists consider  nomination  of, 
145 

Grosh,  Rev.  A.  B.,  Grange 
founder,  4 

Hall,  Carrie,  niece  of  Kelley,  3 

Hallowell,  Colonel  J.  R.,  Simp- 
son and,  136,  137 

Hanna,  M.  A.,  172-74 

Harrisburg  (Penn.).  Grange  es- 
tablished at,  6 

Harvey,  W.  H.,  Coin's  Finan- 
cial School,  160-61 

Hayes,  R.  B.,  vetoes  Bland- 
Allison  bill.  158 

Hill,  D.  B.,  defends  gold  plank 
at  Republican  convention, 
176 


Hoar,  E.  R.,  51 
Hobart,  G.  A.,  nominated  for 
Vice-President,  175 

Idaho,  Populist  success  in 
(1892),  149;  Republican  in 
1894,  168 

Illinois,  independent  farmers' 
organizations,  80;  political 
action  of  farmers  in,  31-32; 
campaign  of  1873  in,  34; 
railroad  regulation,  45,  47- 
49,  52,  55<  Grange  plans 
implement  factory  in,  70; 
Greenback  movement,  81, 
85,  87;  cooperative  creamer- 
ies, 119;  election  of  1892, 150 

Immigration,  restriction  fa- 
vored by  Populist  party,  144; 
Republicans  favor  restric- 
tion, 147 

Independent  party,  31,  133; 
platform,  83-84;  campaign 
(1876),  85;  see  also  National 
Greenback  party 

Independent  Reform  party  in 
Illinois,  87 

Indiana,  Grange  plans  imple- 
ment factory,  70;  Green- 
back movement,  81-82,  85, 
87;  drought  (1895),  105; 
election  of  1890,  138 

Indianapolis,  Greenback  con- 
ference, 82;  Independent 
party  nominating  conven- 
tion, 83 

Indianapolis  Star,  86 

Industrial  Age,  Noonan's,  86 

Industrial  League  of  the 
United  States,  164 

Industrial  party,  133 

International  Monetary  Con- 
ference of  Paris,  156 

Interstate  Commerce  Com- 
mission, Granger  laws  pave 
way  for,  56 

Iowa,  Kelley  in,  2;  Grange  or- 
ganization, 25,  30;  railroad 
regulation  45,  47,  50-51, 


INDEX 


211 


Iowa — Continued 

53;  senate  resolutions  re- 
garding lobbyists  for  rail- 
roads, 53-54;  Grange  plans 
implement  factory  in,  70; 
Greenback  movement  in,  87; 
Populist  party  in,  150;  elec- 
tion of  1896,  191 

Ireland,  W.  M.,  Grange  found- 
er, 4 

Johnson,  Andrew,  authorizes 
investigating  trip  to  South- 
ern States,  1 

Jones,  J.  K.,  at  Democratic 
convention  (1896),  177 

Kansas,  agricultural  clubs  of 
political  complexion,  30; 
Grange  plans  implement  fac- 
tory, 70;  Greenback  move- 
ment, 87;  mortgaged  land, 
106;  Union  Labor  party, 
127;  political  revolt  and 
social  upheaval  (1890),  134- 
137,  139;  Populist  success, 
149;  storm-center  in  na- 
tional politics  (1893),  165- 
166;  Republican  in  1894, 168; 
Farmers'  Alliance  of,  200- 
201 

Kansas  Farmer,  Peffer  editor 
of,  140 

Kearney,  Dennis,  at  National 
party  convention  (1880),  94 

Kelley,  O.  H.,  investigation 
in  South,  1,  2;  life  and  char- 
acter, 1-3;  founds  Grange, 
3-4;  Grange  Secretary,  4, 
27;  organizes  Grange,  5-10; 
quoted,  65 

Kentucky,  Grange  plans  im- 
plement factory,  70;  dele- 
gates attend  meeting  of 
Agricultural  Wheel  (1886), 
117;  fusion  of  parties  (1896), 
188;  McKinley  carries,  191 

Kirkwood,  S.  J.,  92 

Knights  of  Labor.  127,  140 


Kyle,  Rev.  J.  H.,  elected  to 
Senate,  138-39;  presidential 
possibility,  145 

Lampasas  (Tex.),  farmers' 
alliance  organized,  1 12 

Land,  alien  ownership  op- 
posed, 143;  Democratic  de- 
mands (1892),  147 

Lease,  C.  L.,  husband  of  Mary 
E.,  135 

Lease,  Mary  Elizabeth,  134, 
167;  life  and  character,  135; 
quoted,  135-36;  in  campaign 
of  1892,  147,  151 

Liberal  Reform  party,  Taylor 
and,  38 

Liberal  Republican  party,  14- 
18;  in  Missouri,  31 

Louisiana,  Grange  relief  sent 
to,  75;  Farmers'  Union,  115; 
press  comment  on  Populist 
campaign,  148-49;  fusion  of 
parties  (1896),  188 

McDowell,  F.  M.,  Grange 
founder,  4 

McKinley,  William,  candidate 
for  Presidency  (1896),  173- 
175;  campaign,  189;  elec- 
tion, 190-91;  Peffer  sup- 
ports, 195 

Macune,  C.  W.,  and  Texas 
Alliance,  115;  president  of 
National  Farmers'  Alliance, 
115-16;  quoted,  128-29; 
chairman  of  monetary  com- 
mittee, 130 

Manufacturers,  farmers'  rela- 
tions with,  64-65,  71 

Manufacturing,  Grange  activi- 
ties, 68-70 

Martin,  John,  and  silver,  168 

Meridian  (Miss.),  joint  confer- 
ence of  agricultural  orders 
at,  117 

Michigan,  Greenback  move- 
ment in,  87;  drought  (1895), 
105;  election  of  1890,  138 


212 


INDEX 


Middlemen,  fanners'  relations 
with,  63-64,  71 

Minnesota,  Kelley  in,  2,  6; 
Grange  movement  in,  8-9, 
25,  30;  railroad  regulation, 
45,  46-47,  49-50,  55;  Alli- 
ance grain  elevators  in,  119; 
election  of  1890,  138;  Popu- 
list party  in,  150;  press 
comment  on  Populist  party, 
152;  election  of  1896,  191; 
Non-Partisan  League  in,  198 

Minnesota  State  Alliance,  po- 
litical aims,  120 

Mississippi,  Grange  organiza- 
tion, 25 

Missouri,  Democracy  in,  81; 
Liberal  Republican  party  in, 
31;  Grange  plans  implement 
factory,  70;  Grange  relief 
sent  to,  75;  Union  Labor 
party  in,  127;  Populist  party 
in,  150;  fusion  of  parties 
(1896),  188 

Murdock,  Victor,  136 

Nation  quoted,  16 

National  Agricultural  Wheel, 
117 

National  Farmers'  Alliance, 
118;  resolutions  (1887),  121; 
see  also  Northwestern  Alli- 
ance 

National  Farmers'  Alliance 
and  Cooperative  Union  of 
America,  115 

National  Farmers'  Alliance 
and  Industrial  Union,  122 

National  Grange  of  the  Pa- 
trons of  Husbandry,  organi- 
zation, 4;  motto,  4;  "De- 
claration of  Purposes  of  the 
National  Grange,"  28;  ob- 
jections to,  29;  farmers' 
attitude  toward,  62;  see 
also  Grange  movement 

National  Greenback  party,  82; 
see  also  Greenback  Labor 
party 


National  Labor  party,  80 

National  Labor  Union,  79,  80 

National  party,  name  adopted 
at  Toledo  convention,  89; 
campaign  of  1880,  93-95; 
in  later  elections,  96-97; 
convention  at  Indianapolis 
(1884),  96-97;  see  also  Green- 
back Labor  party 

Nebraska,  election  of  1890, 
137-38;  Populist,  150;  elec- 
tion of  1894,  168 

Negroes,  excluded  from  Farm- 
ers' Alliance,  113,  122;  sepa- 
rate lodges  for,  117  (note); 
Colored  Farmers'  Alliance, 
123 

Nevada,  Populist  success  in, 
149;  election  of  1894,  168 

Newton  (Iowa),  Grange  estab- 
lished at,  8 

Non- Partisan  League,  198 

North  Carolina,  Alliance  forms 
Democratic  platform  (1890), 
133;  fusion  of  parties  (1896), 
188 

North  Dakota,  Alliance  grain 
elevators  in,  119;  Populist 
success  in,  149;  Republican 
in  1894,  168;  election  of 
1896,  191;  Non- Partisan 
League,  198 

Northwestern  Alliance,  foun- 
dation, 118;  platform,  119, 
131;  meets  with  Southern 
Alliance,  122;  decline,  124; 
quotation  from  speech  at 
meeting,  126;  see  also  Na- 
tional Farmers'  Alliance 

Norton,  S.  F.,  at  Populist  con- 
vention (1896),  186 

Ocala  (Fla.),  meeting  of  South- 
ern Alliance  at  (1890),  123 

O'Conor,  Charles,  51 

Ohio,  drought  in  (1895),  105 

"Ohio  idea,"  155 

Oklahoma,  Weaver  and  open- 
ing of,  93 


INDEX 


213 


Omaha,  Populist  party  organ- 
ized at,  142;  Bryan  at  Demo- 
cratic convention  (1888),  178 

Oregon,  and  Populist  party, 
151;  election  of  1896,  191 

Panics,  see  Finance 

Parker,  Judge  A.  B.,  candidate 
for  Presidency,  194 

Patrons  of  Husbandry,  see 
Grange  movement,  National 
Grange  of  the  Patrons  of 
Husbandry 

Peffer,  W.  A.,  134,  184;  Sena- 
tor from  Kansas,  139,  168, 
170;  life,  139-40;  Prohibi- 
tion candidate  for  Governor 
of  Kansas,  195;  becomes  Re- 
publican, 195 

Pendleton,  G.  H.,  candidate 
for  Presidency  (1868),  155 

Pennsylvania,  Greenback  party 
in,  87 

Pensacola  Address,  149 

People's  Independent  party  in 
Nebraska,  137 

People's  Party,  1£5  et  seq.; 
adopts  Alliance  platform, 
129;  decline  of,  191-93;  see 
also  Populist  party 

Philadelphia  and  Reading  Rail- 
road Company,  failure,  104 

Politics,  agricultural  clubs  in, 
30-31;  Alliances  in,.  119-21, 
128,  133-34;  see  also  names 
of  parties 

Pomeroy,  M.  M.,  and  Green- 
back Clubs,  86;  Brickdust 
Sketches,  86;  Brick  Pome- 
roy'sDemocrat,86;  Hot  Drops, 
86;  Meat  for  Men,86;  quoted, 
90;  radical  leader,  93 

Poolville  (Tex.),  non-partisan 
alliance  organized,  112 

Populist  party,  organized 
(1892),  142;  platform,  142- 
144;  manifesto  Feb.  22, 1895, 
154;  relations  to  silver  ques- 
tion, 162-63;  contest  with 


Republicans  in  Kansas 
Legislature,  165-68;  and 
Democrats,  188;  decline,  195; 
bibliography,  204-05;  see 
also  People's  Party 

Prices,  decline  after  Civil  War, 
19;  (1883-89),  102;  (1891- 
92),  103-04;  rise  as  result 
of  McKinley  Tariff,  133- 
134;  and  silver  standard,  162 

Producers'  Convention  in  Illi- 
nois, 47 

Progressive  party,  200 

Railroads,  and  the  farmer,  22- 
23;  government  aid,  23; 
legislative  reforms  in  Middle 
West,  32,  35;  state  regula- 
tion, 43  et  seq.;  distribution 
of  favors,  53;  "Granger" 
laws  repealed,  55-56;  Na- 
tional Alliance  demands 
state  regulation,  120,  121; 
government  ownership,  129- 
130,  143;  regulation  accom- 
plished, 198 

Ramsey,  Alexander,  governor 
of  Minnesota,  39,  40 

Reconstruction  in  South,  12-13 

Referendum  favored  by  Popu- 
list party,  144 

Reform  party,  81 

Republican  party,  in  control  in 
North,  11-12;  dissatisfac- 
tion with,  12,  14,  126,  134, 
153;  Liberal  Republican 
movement,  14  et  seq.;  nomi- 
nates Grant  (1872),  16; 
supports  new  party  in  Mis- 
souri, 31;  in  Illinois  (1873), 
34;  attitude  on  currency 
question,  79;  well  estab- 
lished, 97-98,  125;  in  1890, 
137-38;  platform  (1892), 
147;  Populists  seek  control 
in  South,  148-49;  election  of 
1892,  150;  Weaver  on,  151- 
152;  and  free  silver,  158; 
in  Kansas  (1893),  165-67; 


214 


INDEX 


Republican  party — Continued 
success  in  West  (1894),  168; 
convention  at  St.  Louis 
(1896),  172-75;  Hanna  and, 
173-74;  gold  standard,  174; 
campaign  of  1896,  189 

Resumption  Act,  see  Finance 

Review  of  Reviews  on  Populist 
party,  199  (note) 

Robertson,  Colonel  D.  A.,  and 
Grange  organization,  8 

Roosevelt,  Theodore,  195 

St.  Louis,  seventh  annual 
session  of  National  Grange 
at,  28;  Greenback  conven- 
tion (1880),  93;  joint  meet- 
ing of  agricultural  alliances 
(1889),  122,  129;  Republi- 
can convention  (1896),  172; 
Populist  convention  (1896), 
182 

St.  Paul,  North  Star  Grange 
established  at,  8 

Saunders,  William,  Grange 
founder,  4,  27 

Schurz,  Carl,  and  Liberal-Re- 
publican movement,  14;  and 
civil  service  reform,  15;  and 
radical  movements,  19 

Sewall,  Arthur,  candidate  for 
Vice-President,  185,  188 

Shankland,  E.  R.,  of  Iowa,  27 

Sherman,  John,  Secretary  of 
Treasury,  159  (note) 

Silver,  platform  of  National 
party  on  coinage  of,  89,  90; 
agrarian  demand  for  free, 
110,  120,  121,  132;  People's 
Party  platform  and  free,  129; 
Silver  Purchase  Act,  132, 
159-60,  165;  party  platforms 
on,  146-47;  as  issue,  154  et 
aeq.;  Bland- Allison  act,  158, 
159,  160,  173;  free  coinage 
and  the  parties  (1895),  169; 
Bryan  and,  179,  180-81 

Simpson,  "Sockless"  Jerry, 
134,  136-37,  167 


Sloan,  A.  S.,  of  Wisconsin,  18 

South,  Kelley's  trip  to,  1,  2-3; 
reconstruction,  12-13;  op- 
position to  Grange  move- 
ment, 26;  development  of 
farmers'  alliances  in,  112- 
117;  Populist  campaign  in, 
147,  148-49;  elections  of 
1894,  168;  Populists  and  Re- 
publicans in,  170;  Democra- 
tic (1896),  191 

South  Carolina,  Grange  or- 
ganization, 25;  Grange  relief 
sent  to,  75;  Alliance  forms 
Democratic  platform  (1890), 
133;  Democratic  in  1894, 169 

South  Dakota, election  of  1890, 
138;  Independent  party,  138; 
Populist  party  in,  150 

Southern  Alliance,  decline  of, 
123-24;  in  politics,  128;  see 
also  Farmers'  and  Laborers' 
Union  of  America,  National 
Farmers'  Alliance  and  Co- 
operative Union  of  America, 
National  Farmers'  Alliance 
and  Industrial  Union,  Texas 
Alliance 

Sovereign,  J.  R.,  in  Coin's 
Financial  School,  161 

Spectator  (London),  quotation 
from,  99 

Streeter,  A.  J.,  Union  Labor 
candidate  for  President,  127, 
128 

Supreme  Court,  Dartmouth 
College  case,  46;  and  rail- 
road laws,  54;  "Granger 
cases,"  56-57;  Munn  vs. 
Illinois,  57;  Olcott  vs.  The 
Supervisors,  cited,  58  (note); 
and  Minnesota  rate  regula- 
tion, 59 

Tariff,  Liberal-Republican 
party  on,  15;  hardship  for 
farmers,  20;  demand  for  re- 
form, 35,  132;  McKinley, 
134 


INDEX 


215 


Taxation,  issue  of  People's 
Party,  129;  graduated  in- 
come tax,  198 

Taylor,  W.  R.,  Governor  of 
Wisconsin,  S6-S8 

Teller,  of  Colorado,  leaves 
Republican  convention,  174- 
175 

Tennessee,  delegates  attend 
meeting  of  Agricultural 
Wheel  (1886),  116-17;  elec- 
tion of  1896,  188 

Texas,  Union  Labor  party  in, 
127;  election  of  1896,  189 

Texas  Alliance,  112-15 

Thompson,  J.  R.,  Grange 
founder,  4 

Tilden,  S.  J.,  88 

Tillman,  Benjamin,  and  Cleve- 
land, 169,  176 

Trimble,  Rev.  John,  Grange 
founder,  4 

Trumbull,  Lyman,  candidate 
for  Presidential  nomination, 
16;  and  radical  movements, 
19;  Bryan  and,  178 

Toledo  (O.).  conference  organ- 
izes National  party,  88-90 

Tribune,  Chicago,  on  Buchan- 
an, 82 

Trusts,  anti-trust  legislation, 
199 

Union  Labor  party,  127 
Union    Pacific   Railroad,    Na- 
tional Alliance  and,  121 
United     States      Pomplogical 
Society,      Grange     interest 
aroused  at  meeting  of,  4 

Vale,  J.  G.,  of  Iowa,  86 
Waite,   Chief   Justice   M.   R., 


lays  down  principles  for 
railroad  cases,  57 

Washburn,  E.  B.,  40 

Washburn,  W.  D.,  40 

Washington,  Populist  party  in. 
151 

Watson,  T.  E.,  Populist  candi- 
date for  Vice- President,  185, 
188;  nominated  for  Presi- 
dent, 194 

Wealth,  increase  in  forty  years 
(1890),  101 

Weaver,  General  J.  B.,  life  and 
character,  91-93;  Presiden- 
tial nomination,  94;  presides 
over  Greenback  convention, 
96-97;  Populist  candidate 
for  President  (1892),  145- 
146,  147, 151;  on  Republican 
party,  151-52;  seeks  party 
fusion,  170;  on  nomination 
of  Bryan,  186;  goes  over  to 
Democratic  party,  195 

Wells,  D.  A.,  14 

West  Virginia,  election  of  1896, 
191 

White,  S.  M.,  at  Democratic 
convention  (1896),  175 

Wisconsin,  railroad  regulation, 
45,  50-51;  Constitution  on 
corporation  laws,  46;  Potter 
law,  51,  55;  Grange  plans 
implement  factory,  70;  cur- 
rency question  in,  88  (note) ; 
political  activity  of  farmers' 
organizations,  197-98 

Women,  admitted  to  Grange, 
8,  73;  life  on  farm,  72; 
suffrage  favored  by  National 
party,  94;  admitted  to  Alli- 
ance, 113 

Wyoming,  Republican  in  1894, 
168 


UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS-URBANA 


?KSffl  CRUSADE  NEWHAVEH 


